Part 9 (1/2)
THE ARIAN LEAGUE
Political bearings of the Arianisoths, Burgundians--Uprise of the power of Clovis--His conversion to Christianity--His ith Gundobad, king of the Burgundians--With Alaric II, king of the Visigoths--Downfall of the overns Spain as guardian of his grandson Amalaric
[Illustration:]
The position of Theodoric in relation both to his own subjects and to the Empire was seriously modified by one fact to which hitherto I have only alluded casually, the fact that he, like the great majority of the Teutonic invaders of the Empire, was an adherent of the Arian form of Christianity In order to estiion, or at least of religious profession, on politics, at the tiht well look at the condition of another dominion, founded under the coious zeal, which is now going to pieces under our very eyes, I mean the Empire of the Ottomans In the lands which are still under the sway of the Sultan, religion reat political lever When you have said that a man is a Moslem or a Druse, a member of the Orthodox or of the Catholic Church, an Arh to define his political position Without the need of additional inforot the elements of his civic equation, and can say whether he is a loyal subject of the Porte, or whether he looks to Russia or Greece, to France, Austria, or England as the sovereign of his future choice In fact, as has been often pointed out, in the East at this day ”Religion is Nationality”
Very similar to this was the condition of the ancient world at the tian The battle with heathenis the unquestioned conqueror; but the question, which of the many modifications of Christianity devised by the subtle hellenic and Oriental intellects should be the victor, was a question still unsettled, and debated with the keenest interest on all the shores of the Mediterranean So keen indeed was the interest that it sometimes seems almost to have blinded the disputants to the fact that the Roreatest political work that the world has ever seen, was falling in ruins around them
When ant information about the march of armies and the fall of States, the chroniclers to e turn for guidance, withholding that which we seek, deluge us with trivial talk about the squabbles of monks and bishops, about Timothy the Weasel and Peter the Fuller, and a host of other self-seeking ecclesiastics, to whose names, to whose characters, and to whose often violent deaths we are profoundly and absolutely indifferent But though a feeling of utter weariness coical sword-play of the fourth and fifth centuries, the historical student cannot afford to shut his eyes altogether to the battle of the creeds, which produced results of such infinite i process by which Medival Europe was formed out of the Rooth, like alreat Teutonic swaroth, like Gaiseric the Vandal, like Gundobad the Burgundian, was an Arian On the other hand, the Ereat majority of the population of Italy and of the provinces of the Eical divergence which was conveyed by these terms Arian and Catholic, or to speak more judicially (for the Arians averred that they were the true Catholics and that their opponents were heretics) Arian and Athanasian? As this is not the place for a disquisition on disputed points of theology, it is sufficient to say that, while the Athanasian held for truth the whole of the Nicene Creed, the Arian--at least that type of Arian e are here concerned--would, in that part which relates to the Son of God, leave out the words ”being of one substance with the Father”, and would substitute for the like unto the Father in such manner as the Scriptures declare” He would also have refused to repeat the words which assert the Godhead of the Holy Spirit These were important differences, but it will be seen at once that they were not so broad as those which now generally separate ”orthodox” froians
The reasons which led the barbarian invaders of the Empire to accept the Arian form of Christianity are not yet fully disclosed to us The cause could not be an uncultured people's preference for a simple faith, for the Arian chay as the Athanasian, and often surpassed them in these qualities
It is possible that soy handed down to the to accept a subordinate Christ, a spiritualised ”Balder the Beautiful”, divine yet subject to death, standing as it were upon the steps of his father's throne, rather than the doghly spiritualised for their apprehension, of One God in Three Persons But probably the chief cause of the Arianism of the Gerreat extent Arian when they were in friendly relations with it, and were accepting both religion and civilisation at its hands, in the middle years of the fourth century
The e, the man who more than all others was responsible for the conversion of the Germanic races to Christianity, in its Arian form, was the Gothic Bishop, Ulfilas (311-381), whose construction of an Alphabet and translation of the Scriptures into the language of his fellow-country all who are interested in the history of human speech Ulfilas, who has been well termed ”The Apostle of the Goths”, see e (thus in so the part which one hundred and thirty years later was to be played by Theodoric), and having been ordained first Lector (Reader) and afterwards (341) Bishop of Gothia, he spent the re his country those of his converts who fled fro thereat work of the translation of the Bible into Gothic Of this work, as is well known, solorious Silver Manuscript of the Gospels _(Codex Argenteus),_ which is supposed to have been written in the sixth century, and which, after s and an eventful history, rests now in a Scandinavian land, in the Library of the University of Upsala, It is orth while to e to that friendly and hospitable Swedish city, if for no other purpose than to see the letters (traced in silver on parchment of rich purple dye) in which the skilful as of Christ rendered by Bishop Ulfilas into the language of Alaric For that _Codex Argenteus_ is oldest of all extant hty tree which now spreads its branches over half the civilised world
With the theological bearings of the Arian controversy we have no present concern; but it is impossible not to notice the unfortunate political results of the difference of creed between the Gerreat majority of the inhabitants of the Empire The cultivators of the soil and the dwellers in the cities had sufferedthe last two centuries of Imperial sway; they could, to some extent, appreciate the nobler moral qualities of the barbarian settlers--their her standard of chastity; nor is it idle to suppose that if there had been perfect harious faith between the new-coht soon have settled down into vigorous and well-ordered coed to behold, coth with the Roious discord y loathed and dreaded the invaders ”infected”, as they said, ”with the Arian pravity” The barbarian kings, unaccustomed to have their will opposed by h-handed in their demand for absolute obedience, even when their cos of Csar; and the Arian bishops and priests who stood beside their thrones, and who had soeance for past insult or oppression to exact, often wrought up the oaded hi creeds hopelessly is set on foot a persecution of their Catholic subjects which rivalled, nay exceeded, the horrors of the persecution under Diocletian Churches were destroyed, bishops banished, and their flocks forbidden to elect their successors: nay, sometimes, in the fierce quest after hidden treasure, eminent ecclesiastics were stretched on the rack, their mouths were filled with noisome dirt, or cords were twisted round their foreheads or their shi+ns In Gaul, under the Visigothic King Euric, the persecution was less savage, but it was stubborn and severe Here, too, the congregations were forbidden to elect successors to their exiled bishops; the paths to the churches were stopped up with thorns and briers; cattle grazed on the grass-grown altar steps, and the rain cah the shattered roofs into the dismantled basilicas
Thus all round the shores of the Mediterranean there was strife and bitter heart-burning between the Rouest”, not so much because one was or called hiundian, or Vandal, but because one was Athanasian and the other Arian With this strife of creeds Theodoric, for the greater part of his reign, refused to concern himself He remained an Arian, as his fathers had been before hies which she had acquired, and he refused to exert his royal authority to either threaten or allurehis creed So evenly for many years did he hold the balance between the rival faiths, that it was reported of him that he put to death a Catholic priest who apostatised to Arianish this story does not perhaps rest on sufficient authority, there can be no doubt that the general testi Catholic subjects of Theodoric would have coincided with that already quoted (See page 128) froainst the Catholic faith”
Still, though deterovern in the interests of a sect, it was impossible that Theodoric's political relations should not be, to a certain extent, lance at the position of the chief States hich a ruler of Italy at the close of the fifth century necessarily came in contact
First of all we have _the Empire,_ practically confined at this time to ”the Balkan peninsula” south of the Danube, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, and presided over by the elderly, politic, but unpopular Anastasius This State is Catholic, though, as we shall hereafter see, not in hearty alliance with the Church of Ro the southern shore of the Mediterranean, stretches the great kingdoe for its capital They have a powerful navy, but their kings, Gunthamund (484-496) and Thrasamund (496-523), do not see expeditions of their grandfather, the great Vandal Gaiseric They are decided Arians, and keep up a stern, steady pressure on their Catholic subjects, who are spared, however, the ruthless brutalities practised upon thes
The relations of the Vandals with the Ostrogothic kingdo aln of Theodoric
Thrasae, ht with her, as dowry, possession of the strong fortress of Lilybum _(Marsala),_ in the west of Sicily, and as accompanied to her new home by a brilliant train of one thousand Gothic nobles with five thousand mounted retainers
In the north and west of Spain dwell the nation of the _Suevi,_ Teutonic and Arian, but practically out of the sphere of European politics, and who, half a century after the death of Theodoric, will be absorbed by their Visigothic neighbours
This latter state, the kingdooths,_ is apparently, at the end of the fifth century, by far the most powerful of the new barbarian monarchies All Spain, except its north-western corner, and soion which is contained between the Pyrenees and the Loire, owns the sway of the young king, whose capital city is Toulouse, and who, though a stranger in blood, bears the naoth who first battered a breach in the walls of Rohty Alaric This Alaric II (485-507), the son of Euric, who had been the n of his dynasty, inherited neither his father's force of character (485-507) nor the bitterness of his Arianism The persecution of the Catholics was suspended, or ceased altogether, and wetheir way by unblockaded paths to the house of prayer, the churches once eous by the stately ceremonial of the Catholic rite In other ways, too, Alaric showed himself anxious to conciliate the favour of his Roman subjects He ordered an abstract of the Imperial Code to be prepared, and this abstract, under the name of the _Breviarium Alaricianum_[92] is to this day one of our most valuable sources of information as to Roman Law He is also said to have directed the construction of the canal, which still bears his na the Adour with the Aisne, assists the irrigation of the meadows of Gascony But all these atte and his orthodox subjects were vain When the day of trial ca been suspected, that the syy were thrown entirely on the side of the Catholic invader
[Footnote 92: Sometiistrar whose signature attested each copy of the _Breviariuothic courts there was firm friendshi+p and alliance, the rein and of ether on the shores of the Euxine and in the passes of the Balkans being fortified by the knowledge of the dangers to which their common profession of Arianism exposed them amidst the Catholic population of the Eood stead when the Visigoths helped hithened by kinshi+p, the young king of Toulouse having received in iven as Arevagni or Ostrogotho
Aof the _Burgundians_ These invaders, ere destined so strangely to disappear out of history theions of medival Europe, occupied at this time the valleys of the Saone and the Rhone, as well as the country whichcall Switzerland Their king, Gundobad, a man somewhat older than Theodoric, had once interfered zealously in the politics of Italy, ainst his Ostrogothic rival Noever, his whole energies were directed to extending his do his somewhat precarious throne from the machinations of the Catholic bishops, his subjects For he, too, was by profession an Arian, though of a tolerant type, and though he so the abyss and declaring hiotho, sister of Arevagni, was given by her father, Theodoric in ismund, the son and heir of Gundobad
The event which intensified the fears of all these Arian kings, and which left to each one little ht be the last to be devoured, was the conversion to Catholicis of the _Franks_, that fortunate barbarian who, by a well-timed baptism, won for his tribe of rude warriors the possession of the fairest land in Europe and the glory of giving birth to one of the foremost nations in the world
[Footnote 93: I call the Frankish king by the nah no doubt theor Chlodovech It is of course the same name with Ludovicus or Louis I do not knohether the barbarian sound of Hlodwig offended the delicate taste of Cassiodorus, but in the ”Various Letters” he addresses the king of the Franks as Luduuttural before the L which Gregory of Tours endeavoured to represent by Ch (Chlodovech), while Cassiodorus, receiving the naht it safer to leave it unrepresented (Ludum) In any case his _n_of the final sound]
As we are here come to one of the common-places of history, I need but very briefly rees in the upward course of the young Frankish king Born in 466, he succeeded his father, Childeric, as one of the kings of the Salian Franks in 481 The lands of the Salians occupied but the extreme northern corner of modern France, and a portion of Flanders, and even here Clovis was but one of ed in petty and inglorious wars one with another
For five years the young Salian chieftain lived in peace with his neighbours In the twentieth year of his age (486) he sprang with one bound into farius, ith ill-defined prerogatives, and bearing the title not of E, had succeeded a some of the fairest districts of the north of Gaul from barbarian domination With the help of so of Soissons” Syagrius took refuge at the court of Toulouse, and the Frankish king now felt hi Alaric, who had ascended the throne only a year before, a pere, under the penalty of a declaration of war, on the surrender of the Roh to purchase peace by delivering up his guest, bound in fetters, to the ambassadors of Clovis, who shortly after ordered him to be privily done to death From that time, we may well believe, Clovis felt confident that he should one day vanquish Alaric
About seven years after this event (493) caundian princess, who, unlike her Arian uncle, Gundobad, was enthusiastically devoted to the Catholic faith, and who ceased not by private conversations and by inducing hiius, to endeavour to win her husband froion of his heathen forefathers to the creed of Rome and of the E hi to the traditions of his people, from the sea-God Meroveus, he was not in haste to renounce this fabulous glory, nor to acknowledge as Lord, One who had been reared in a carpenter's shop at Nazareth He allowed Clotilda to have her eldest son baptised, but when the child soon after died, he took that as a sign of the power and vengeance of the old Gods A second son was born, was baptised, fell sick Had that child died, Clovis would probably have reiven back, as was believed, to the earnest prayers of his mother
[Footnote 94: More accurately Chrotchildis]