Part 13 (1/2)

Nothing the Romans did was more admirable than their organisation of munic.i.p.al life. They avoided the common blunder of imposing on all a uniform organisation, and so gave free play to local feeling and custom so far as was consistent with imperial order and peace. Civic life became, as a consequence, well ordered and persistent. It was far less corrupt than administration in the capital, and freedom persisted in the provincial towns for long after its practical disappearance in Rome itself. Indeed, but for the antagonism of Christianity, it is probable that the urban munic.i.p.alities might have provided the impetus for the rejuvenation of the Empire.[174]

From the outset, the early Christian movement stood as a whole apart from the civic life of the Empire, while the ascetic waged a constant warfare against it. ”According to monastic view of Christianity,” says Milman, ”the total abandonment of the world, with all its ties and duties, as well as its treasures, its enjoyments, and objects of ambition, advanced rather than diminished the hopes of salvation.” The object was individual salvation, not social regeneration. When people were praised for breaking the closest of family ties in their desire for salvation, it would be absurd to suppose that social duties and obligations would remain exempt. The Christian ascetic was ready enough to risk his own life, or to take the life of others, on account of minute points of doctrinal difference, but he was deaf to the call of patriotism or the demands of civic life. Theology became the one absorbing topic; and as monasticism a.s.sumed more menacing proportions, the monk became the dominating figure, paralysing by his presence the healthful activities of ma.s.ses of the people. Speaking of the Eastern Empire, although his words apply with almost equal truth wherever the Church was supreme, Milman says:--

”That which is the characteristic sign of the times as a social and political, as well as a religious, phenomenon, is the complete dominion a.s.sumed by the monks in the East over the public mind.... The monks, in fact, exercise the most complete tyranny, not merely over the laity, but over bishops and patriarchs, whose rule, though nominally subject to it, they throw off whenever it suits their purposes.... Monks in Alexandria, monks in Antioch, monks in Constantinople, decide peremptorily on orthodoxy and heterodoxy.... Persecution is universal; persecution by every means of violence and cruelty; the only question is in whose hands is the power to persecute.... Bloodshed, murder, treachery, a.s.sa.s.sination, even during the public wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d--these are the frightful means by which each party strives to maintain its opinions and to defeat its adversary. Ecclesiastical and civil authority are alike paralysed by combinations of fanatics ready to suffer or to inflict death, utterly unapproachable by reason.”[175]

Against such combinations of ignorance, fanaticism, and ferocity, the few remaining lovers of secular progress were powerless. Patriotism became a mere name, and organised civic life an almost forgotten aspiration. What the Pagan world had understood by a 'good man' was one who spent himself in the service of his country. The Christian understood by it one who succeeded in saving his own soul, even at the sacrifice of family and friends. Vampire-like, monasticism fed upon the life-blood of the Empire. The civic life and patriotism of old Rome became a mere tradition, to inspire long after the men of the Renaissance and of the French Revolution.

Finally, asceticism exerted a powerful influence on religion itself.

That it served to strengthen and perpetuate the life of religion there can be little doubt. However strongly some people may have resented the monastic ideal, it nevertheless gave increased strength and vitality to the religious idea. To begin with, it offered for centuries a very powerful obstacle to the development of those progressive and scientific ideas that have made such advances in all centres of civilisation during the past two or three centuries. To the common mind it brought home the supremacy of religion in a way that nothing else could. The mere sight of monarch and n.o.ble yielding homage to the monk, acknowledging his supremacy in what was declared to be the chief interest in life, the interference of the monk in every department of life, saturated society with supernaturalism. And although at a later period the rapacity, dissoluteness, and tyranny of the monkish orders led to revolt, by that time the imagination of all had been thoroughly impressed with the value of religion. Even to-day current theology is permeated with the monkish notions of self-denial, self-sacrifice, and contempt of the world's comfort and beauty as belonging to the essence of pure religion. The lives of the saints still remain the storehouse of ideals for the religious preacher. In spite of their absurd practices and disgusting penances, later generations have not failed to hold them up as examples.

They have been used to impress the imagination of their successors, as they were used to impress the minds of their contemporaries. The fact of Thomas a Beckett wearing a hair s.h.i.+rt running with vermin has not prevented his being held up as an example of the power of religion.

People fear ghosts long after they cease to believe in them; they pay unreasoning homage to a crown long after intellectual development has robbed the kingly office of its primitive significance; all the recent developments of democracy have not abolished the Englishman's const.i.tutional crick in the neck at the sight of a n.o.bleman. Nor is supernaturalism expunged from a society because the conditions that gave it birth have pa.s.sed away. A religious epidemic is not a.n.a.logous to those physical disorders which deposit an ant.i.toxin and so protect against future attacks. It resembles rather those disorders that permanently weaken, and so invite repeated a.s.saults. The ascetic epidemic pa.s.sed away; but, before doing so, it thoroughly saturated with supernaturalism the social atmosphere and impressed its power upon the public mind. It gave supernaturalism a new and longer lease of life, and paved the way for other outbreaks, of a less general, but still of a thoroughly epidemic character.

FOOTNOTES:

[164] See _The Psychology of Peoples_ and _The Crowd_.

[165] _Origin and Development of Religious Belief_, i. pp. 343-8.

[166] _History of European Morals_, ii. pp. 107-10. For a careful description of the monastic discipline in its more normal aspects, see Bingham's Works, vol. ii. bk. vi. Gibbon gives his usual brilliant summary of the movement in chapter x.x.xvii. of the _Decline and Fall_. A host of facts similar to those cited by Lecky will be found in _The Book of Paradise_, 2 vols., trans. by Wallis Budge. Lea's _History of Sacerdotal Celibacy_ gives the cla.s.sical and authoritative account of the moral consequences of the practice of celibacy. For a vivid picture of the psychology of the ascetic, see Flaubert's great romance, _St.

Antony_.

[167] Cited by Lecky, ii. p. 131.

[168] Dean Milman, _Hist. of Latin Christianity_, ii. pp. 81-2.

[169] Lecky, ii. pp. 134-5.

[170] _Hereditary Genius_, 1869, p. 357.

[171] Lea, p. 109.

[172] Lea, p. 332.

[173] See Lea, pp. 353-4.

[174] For a fine sketch of Roman munic.i.p.al life, see Dill's _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, chap. ii.

[175] _Hist. of Latin Christianity_, i. pp. 317-8.

CHAPTER NINE

RELIGIOUS EPIDEMICS--(_CONCLUDED_)

It is not easy to overestimate the influence of monasticism on subsequent religious history. The lives of its votaries provided examples of almost every conceivable kind of self-torture or semi-maniacal behaviour. It had made the world thoroughly familiar with extravagance of action as the symptom of intense religious conviction.

And its influence on social development had been such that the susceptibility of the public mind to suggestions was as a raw wound in the presence of a powerful irritant. Such an inst.i.tution as the Inquisition could only have maintained itself among a people thoroughly familiar with supernaturalism, and to whom its preservation was the first and most sacred of duties.

A society habituated to the commanding presence of the monk, fed upon stories of their miraculous encounters with celestial and diabolic visitants, and so accustomed to regard the priesthood as in a very peculiar sense the mouthpiece of divinity, was well prepared for such a series of events as the crusades for the recovery of the Holy Land.

Pilgrimages to the burial-places of saints, and to spots connected, by legend or otherwise, with Christian history, had long been in vogue, and formed a source of both revenue to the Church and of inspiration to the faithful. As early as 833 a guide-book had been prepared called the _Itinerary from Bordeaux to Jerusalem_, and along the route marked convents and shelters for the pilgrims were established. A lucrative traffic in relics of every description had also been established, and any interference with this touched the Church in its tenderest point.

Added to which the expected end of the world in the year 1000 had the effect of still further increasing the crowd of pilgrims to the Holy Land, where it was firmly believed the second advent would take place.