THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST.
From the Age of Faith, in the East,
I have now to turn to the Age of Faith in the West.
The former, as we have seen, ended prematurely, through
a metamorphosis of the populations by military operations,
conquests, polygamy; the latter, under more favourable
circumstances, gradually completed its predestined
phases, and, after the lapse of many centuries, passed
into the Age of Reason.
If so many recollections of profound
interest cluster round Jerusalem, “the Holy
City” of the East, many scarcely inferior are
connected with Rome, “the Eternal City”
of the West.
The Byzantine system, which, having
originated in the policy of an ambitious soldier struggling
for supreme power, and in the devices of ecclesiastics
intolerant of any competitors, had spread itself all
over the eastern and southern portions of the Roman
empire, and with its hatred of human knowledge and
degraded religious ideas and practices, had been adopted
at last even in Italy. Not by the Romans, for
they had ceased to exist, but by the medley of Goths
and half-breeds, the occupants of that peninsula.
Gregory the Great is the incarnation of the ideas
of this debased population. That evil system,
so carefully nurtured by Constantine and cherished
by all the Oriental bishops, had been cut down by
the axe of the Vandal, the Persian, the Arab, in its
native seats, but the offshoot of it that had been
planted in Rome developed spontaneously with unexpected
luxuriance, and cast its dark shadow over Europe for
many centuries. He who knew what Christianity
had been in the apostolic days, might look with boundless
surprise on what was now ingrafted upon it, and was
passing under its name.
In the last chapter we have seen how,
through the Vandal invasion, Africa was lost to the
empire a dire calamity, for, of all the
provinces, it had been the least expensive and the
most productive; it yielded men, money, and, what
was perhaps of more importance, corn for the use of
Italy. A sudden stoppage of the customary supply
rendered impossible the usual distributions in Rome,
Ravenna, Milan. A famine fell upon Italy, bringing
in its train an inevitable diminution of the population.
To add to the misfortunes, Attila, the King of the
Huns, or, as he called himself, “the Scourge
of God,” invaded the empire. The battle
of Chalons, the convulsive death-throe of the Roman
empire, arrested his career, A.D. 451.
Four years after this event, through
intrigues in the imperial family, Genseric, the Vandal
king, was invited from Africa to Rome. The atrocities
which of old had been practised against Carthage under
the auspices of the senate were now avenged.
For fourteen days the Vandals sacked the city, perpetrating
unheard-of cruelties. Their ships, brought into
the Tiber, enabled them to accomplish their purpose
of pillage far more effectually than would have been
possible by any land expedition. The treasures
of Rome, with multitudes of noble captives, were transported
to Carthage. In twenty-one years after this time,
A.D. 476, the Western Empire became extinct.
Thus the treachery of the African
Arians not only brought the Vandals into the most
important of all the provinces, so far as Italy was
concerned; it also furnished an instrument for the
ruin of Rome. But hardly had the Emperor Justinian
reconquered Africa when he attempted the subjugation
of the Goths now holding possession of Italy.
His general, Belisarius, captured Rome, De, A.D.
556. In the military operations ensuing with
Vitiges, Italy was devastated, the population sank
beneath the sword, pestilence, famine. In all
directions the glorious remains of antiquity were
destroyed; statues, as those of the Mole of Hadrian,
were thrown upon the besiegers of Rome. These
operations closed by the surrender of Vitiges to Belisarius
at the capture of Ravenna.
But, as soon as the military compression
was withdrawn, revolt broke out. Rome was retaken
by the Goths; its walls were razed; for forty days
it was deserted by its inhabitants, an emigration that
in the end proved its ruin. Belisarius, who had
been sent back by the emperor, re-entered it, but
was too weak to retain it. During four years Italy
was ravaged by the Franks and the Goths. At last
Justinian sent the eunuch Narses with a well-appointed
army. The Ostrogothic monarchy was overthrown,
and the emperor governed Italy by his exarchs at Ravenna.
But what was the cost of all this?
We may reject the statement previously made, that
Italy lost fifteen millions of inhabitants, on the
ground that such computations were beyond the ability
of the survivors, but, from the asserted number we
may infer that there had been a horrible catastrophe.
In other directions the relics of civilization were
fast disappearing; the valley of the Danube had relapsed
into a barbarous state; the African shore had become
a wilderness; Italy a hideous desert; and the necessary
consequence of the extermination of the native Italians
by war, and their replacement by barbarous adventurers,
was the falling of the sparse population of that peninsula
into a lower psychical state. It was ready for
the materialized religion that soon ensued. An
indelible aspect was stamped on the incoming Age of
Faith. The East and the West had equally displayed
the imbecility of ecclesiastical rule. Of both,
the Holy City had fallen; Jerusalem had been captured
by the Persian and the Arab, Rome had been sacked
by the Vandal and the Goth.
But, for the proper description of
the course of affairs, I must retrace my steps a little.
In the important political events coinciding with the
death of Leo the Great, and the constitution of the
kingdom of Italy by the barbarian Odoacer, A.D. 476-490,
the bishops of Rome seem to have taken but little
interest. Doubtless, on one side, they perceived
the transitory nature of such incidents, and, on the
other, clearly saw for themselves the road to lasting
spiritual domination. The Christians everywhere
had long expressed a total carelessness for the fate
of old Rome; and in the midst of her ruins the popes
were incessantly occupied in laying deep the foundations
of their power. Though it mattered little to
them who was the temporal ruler of Italy, they were
vigilant and energetic in their relations with their
great competitors, the bishops of Constantinople and
Alexandria. It had become clear that Christendom
must have a head; and that headship, once definitely
settled, implied the eventual control over the temporal
power. Of all objects of human ambition, that
headship was best worth struggling for.
Steadily pursuing every advantage
as it arose, Rome inexorably insisted that her decisions
should be carried out in Constantinople itself.
This was the case especially in the affair of Acacius,
the bishop of that city, who, having been admonished
for his acts by Felix, the bishop of Rome, was finally
excommunicated. A difficulty arose as to the manner
in which the process should be served; but an adventurous
monk fastened it to the robe of Acacius as he entered
the church. Acacius, undismayed, proceeded with
his services, and, pausing deliberately, ordered the
name of Felix, the Bishop of Rome, to be struck from
the roll of bishops in communion with the East.
Constantinople and Rome thus mutually excommunicated
one another. It is in reference to this affair
that Pope Gelasius, addressing the emperor, says;
“There are two powers which rule the world,
the imperial and pontifical. You are the sovereign
of the human race, but you bow your neck to those
who preside over things divine. The priesthood
is the greater of the two powers; it has to render
an account in the last day for the acts of kings.”
This is not the language of a feeble ecclesiastic,
but of a pontiff who understands his power.
The conquest of Italy by Theodoric,
the Ostrogoth, A.D. 493, gave to the bishops of Rome
an Arian sovereign, and presented to the world the
anomaly of a heretic appointing God’s vicar upon
earth. There was a contested election between
two rival candidates, whose factions, emulating the
example of the East, filled the city with murder.
The Gothic monarch ordered that he who had most suffrages,
and had been first consecrated, should be acknowledged.
In this manner Symmachus became pope.
Hormisdas, who succeeded Symmachus,
renewed the attempt to compel the Eastern emperor,
Anastasius, to accept the degradation of Acacius and
his party, and to enforce the assent of all his clergy
thereto, but in vain. On the accession of Justin
to the imperial throne, Rome at last carried her point;
all her conditions were admitted; the schism was ended
in the humiliation of the Bishop of Constantinople,
it was said, through the orthodoxy of the emperor.
But very soon began to appear unmistakable indications
that for this religious victory a temporal equivalent
had been given. Conspiracies were detected in
Rome against Theodoric, the Gothic king; and rumours
were whispered about that the arms of Constantinople
would before long release Italy from the heretical
yoke of the Arian. There can be no doubt that
Theodoric detected the treason. It was an evil
reward for his impartial equity. At once he disarmed
the population of Rome. From being a merciful
sovereign, he exhibited an awful vengeance. It
was in these transactions that Boethius, the philosopher,
and Symmachus, the senator, fell victims to his wrath.
The pope John himself was thrown into prison, and there
miserably died. In his remonstrances with Justin,
the great barbarian monarch displays sentiments far
above his times, yet they were the sentiments that
had hitherto regulated his actions. “To
pretend to a dominion over the conscience is to usurp
the prerogative of God. By the nature of things,
the power of sovereigns is confined to political government.
They have no right of punishment but over those who
disturb the public peace. The most dangerous
heresy is that of a sovereign who separates himself
from part of his subjects because they believe not
according to his belief.”
Theodoric had been but a few years
dead his soul was seen by an orthodox hermit
carried by devils into the crater of the volcano of
Lipari, which was considered to be the opening into
hell when the invasion of Italy by Justinian
showed how well-founded his suspicions had been.
Rome was, however, very far from receiving the advantages
she had expected; the inconceivable wickedness of
Constantinople was brought into Italy. Pope Sylverius,
who was the son of Pope Hormisdas, was deposed by
Theodora, the emperor’s wife. This woman,
once a common prostitute, sold the papacy to Vigilius
for two hundred pounds of gold. Her accomplice,
Antonina, the unprincipled wife of Belisarius, had
Sylverius stripped of his robes and habited as a monk.
He was subsequently banished to the old convict island
of Pandataria, and there died. Vigilius embraced
Eutychianism and, it was said, murdered one of his
secretaries, and caused his sister’s son to be
beaten to death. He was made to feel what it
is for a bishop to be in the hands of an emperor;
to taste of the cup so often presented to prelates
at Constantinople; to understand in what estimation
his sovereign held the vicar of God upon earth.
Compelled to go to that metropolis to embrace the
theological views which Justinian had put forth, thrice
he agreed to them, and thrice he recanted; he excommunicated
the Patriarch of Constantinople, and was excommunicated
by him. In his personal contests with the imperial
officials, they dragged him by his feet from a sanctuary
with so much violence that a part of the structure
was pulled down upon him; they confined him in a dungeon
and fed him on bread and water. Eventually he
died an outcast in Sicily. The immediate effect
of the conquest of Italy was the reduction of the
popes to the degraded condition of the patriarchs
of Constantinople. Such were the bitter fruits
of their treason to the Gothic king. The success
of Justinian’s invasion was due to the clergy;
in the ruin they brought upon their country, and the
relentless tyranny they drew upon themselves, they
had their reward.
In the midst of this desolation and
degradation the Age of Faith was gradually assuming
distinctive linéaments in Italy. Paganization,
which had been patronized as a matter of policy in
the East, became a matter of necessity in the West.
To a man like Gregory the Great, born in a position
which enabled him to examine things from a very general
point of view, it was clear that the psychical condition
of the lower social stratum demanded concessions in
accordance with its ideas. The belief of the
thoughtful must be alloyed with the superstition of
the populace.
Accordingly, that was what actually
occurred. For the clear understanding of these
events I shall have to speak, 1st, of the acts of
Pope Gregory the Great, by whom the ideas of the age
were organized and clothed in a dress suited to the
requirements of the times; 2d, of the relations which
the papacy soon assumed with the kings of France, by
which the work of Gregory was consolidated, upheld,
and diffused all over Europe. It adds not a little
to the interest of these things that the influences
thus created have outlasted their original causes,
and, after the lapse of more than a thousand years,
though moss-covered and rotten, are a stumbling-block
to the progress of nations.
Gregory the Great was the grandson
of Pope Felix. His patrician parentage and conspicuous
abilities had attracted in early life the attention
of the Emperor Justin, by whom he was appointed prefect
of Rome. Withdrawn by the Church from the splendours
of secular life, he was sent, while yet a deacon,
as nuncio to Constantinople. Discharging the
duties that had been committed to him with singular
ability and firmness, he resumed the monastic life
on his return, with daily increasing reputation.
Elected to the papacy by the clergy, the senate, and
people of Rome, A.D. 590, with well dissembled resistance
he implored the emperor to reject their choice, and,
on being refused, escaped from the city hidden in
a basket. It is related that the retreat in which
he was concealed was discovered by a celestial hovering
light that settled upon it, and revealed to the faithful
their reluctant pope. This was during a time
of pestilence and famine.
Once made supreme pontiff, this austere
monk in an instant resumed the character he had displayed
at Constantinople, and exhibited the qualities of
a great statesman. He regulated the Roman liturgy,
the calendar of festivals, the order of processions,
the fashions of sacerdotal garments; he himself officiated
in the canon of the mass, devised many solemn and
pompous rites, and invented the chant known by his
name. He established schools of music, administered
the Church revenues with precision and justice, and
set an example of almsgiving and charity; for such
was the misery of the times that even Roman matrons
had to accept the benevolence of the Church. He
authorized the alienation of Church property for the
redemption of slaves, laymen as well as ecclesiastics.
An insubordinate clergy and a dissolute
populace quickly felt the hand that now held the reins.
He sedulously watched the inferior pastors, dealing
out justice to them, and punishing all who offended
with rigorous severity. He compelled the Italian
bishops to acknowledge him as their metropolitan.
He extended his influence to Greece; prohibited simony
in Gaul; received into the bosom of the Church Spain,
now renouncing her Arianism; sent out missionaries
to Britain, and converted the pagans of that country;
extirpated heathenism from Sardinia; resisted John,
the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had dared to take
the title of universal bishop; exposed to the emperor
the ruin occasioned by the pride, ambition, and wickedness
of the clergy, and withstood him on the question of
the law prohibiting soldiers from becoming monks.
It was not in the nature of such a man to decline the
regulation of political affairs; he nominated tribunes,
and directed the operations of troops.
No one can shake off the system that
has given him power; no one can free himself from
the tincture of the times of which he is the representative.
Though in so many respects Gregory was far in advance
of his age, he was at once insincere and profoundly
superstitious. With more than Byzantine hatred
he detested human knowledge. His oft-expressed
belief that the end of the world was at hand was perpetually
contradicted by his acts, which were ceaselessly directed
to the foundation of a future papal empire. Under
him was sanctified that mythologic Christianity destined
to become the religion of Europe for many subsequent
centuries, and which adopted the adoration of the Virgin
by images and pictures; the efficacy of the remains
of martyrs and relics; stupendous miracles wrought
at the shrines of saints; the perpetual interventions
of angels and devils in sublunary affairs; the truth
of legends far surpassing in romantic improbability
the stories of Greek mythology; the localization of
heaven a few miles above the air, and of hell in the
bowels of the earth, with its portal in the crater
of Lipari. Gregory himself was a sincere believer
in miracles, ghosts, and the resurrection of many
persons from the grave, but who, alas! had brought
no tidings of the secret wonders of that land of deepest
shade. He made these wild fancies the actual,
the daily, the practical religion of Europe.
Participating in the ecclesiastical hatred of human
learning, and insisting on the maxim that “Ignorance
is the mother of devotion,” he expelled from
Rome all mathematical studies, and burned the Palatine
library founded by Augustus Cæsar. It was valuable
for the many rare manuscripts it contained. He
forbade the study of the classics, mutilated statues,
and destroyed temples. He hated the very relics
of classical genius; pursued with vindictive fanaticism
the writings of Livy, against whom he was specially
excited. It has truly been said that “he
was as inveterate an enemy to learning as ever lived;”
that “no lucid ray ever beamed on his superstitious
soul.” He boasted that his own works were
written without regard to the rules of grammar, and
censured the crime of a priest who had taught that
subject. It was his aim to substitute for the
heathen writings others which he thought less dangerous
to orthodoxy; and so well did he succeed in rooting
out of Italy her illustrious pagan authors, that when
one of his successors, Paul I., sent to Pepin of France
“what books he could find,” they were
“an antiphonal, a grammar, and the works of Dionysius
the Areopagite.” He was the very incarnation
of the Byzantine principle of ignorance.
If thus the misfortunes that had fallen
on Italy had given her a base population, whose wants
could only be met by a paganized religion, the more
fortunate classes all over the empire had long been
tending in the same direction. Whoever will examine
the progress of Christian society from the earlier
ages, will find that there could be no other result
than a repudiation of solid learning and an alliance
with art. We have only to compare the poverty
and plainness of the first disciples with the extravagance
reached in a few generations. Cyprian complains
of the covetousness, pride, luxury, and worldly-mindedness
of Christians, even of the clergy and confessors.
Some made no scruple to contract matrimony with heathens.
Clement of Alexandria bitterly inveighs against “the
vices of an opulent and luxurious Christian community splendid
dresses, gold and silver vessels, rich banquets, gilded
litters and chariots, and private baths. The
ladies kept Indian birds, Median peacocks, monkeys,
and Maltese dogs, instead of maintaining widows and
orphans; the men had multitudes of slaves.”
The dipping three times at baptism, the tasting of
honey and milk, the oblations for the dead, the signing
of the cross on the forehead on putting on the clothes
or the shoes, or lighting a candle, which Tertullian
imputes to tradition without the authority of Scripture,
foreshadowed a thousand pagan observances soon to be
introduced. As time passed on, so far from the
state of things improving, it became worse. Not
only among the frivolous class, but even among historic
personages, there was a hankering after the ceremonies
of the departed creed, a lingering attachment to the
old rites, and, perhaps, a religious indifference
to the new. To the age of Justinian these remarks
strikingly apply. Boethius was, at the best, only
a pagan philosopher; Tribonian, the great lawyer,
the author of the Justinian Code, was suspected of
being an atheist.
In the East, the splendour of the
episcopal establishments extorted admiration even
from those who were familiar with the imperial court.
The well-ordered trains of attendants and the magnificent
banquets in the bishops’ palaces are particularly
praised. Extravagant views of the pre-eminent
value of celibacy had long been held among the more
devout, who conceded a reluctant admission even for
marriage itself. “I praise the married
state, but chiefly for this, that it provides virgins,”
had been the more than doubtful encomium of St. Jerome.
Among the clergy, who under the force of this growing
sentiment found it advisable to refrain from marriage,
it had become customary, as we learn from the enactments
and denunciations against the practice, to live with
“sub-introduced women,” as they were called.
These passed as sisters of the priests, the correctness
of whose taste was often exemplified by the remarkable
beauty of their sinful partners. A law of Honorius
put an end to this iniquity. The children arising
from these associations do not appear to have occasioned
any extraordinary scandal. At weddings it was
still the custom to sing hymns to Venus. The cultivation
of music at a very early period attracted the attention
of many of the great ecclesiastics Paul
of Samosata, Arius, Chrysostom. In the first
congregations probably all the worshippers joined in
the hymns and psalmody. By degrees, however,
more skilful performers had been introduced, and the
chorus of the Greek tragedy made available under the
form of antiphonal singing. The Ambrosian chant
was eventually exchanged for the noble Roman chant
of Gregory the Great, which has been truly characterised
as the foundation of all that is grand and elevated
in modern music.
With the devastation that Italy had
suffered the Latin language was becoming extinct.
But Roman literature had never been converted to Christianity.
Of the best writers among the Fathers, not one was
a Roman; all were provincials. The literary
basis was the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament,
the poetical imagery being, for the most part, borrowed
from the prophets. In historical compositions
there was a want of fair dealing and truthfulness
almost incredible to us; thus Eusebius naively avows
that in his history he shall omit whatever might tend
to the discredit of the Church, and magnify whatever
might conduce to her glory. The same principle
was carried out in numberless legends, many of them
deliberate forgeries, the amazing credulity of the
times yielding to them full credit, no matter how much
they might outrage common sense. But what else
was to be expected of generations who could believe
that the tracks of Pharaoh’s chariot-wheels were
still impressed on the sands of the Red Sea, and could
not be obliterated either by the winds or the waves?
He who ventured to offend the public taste for these
idle fables brought down upon himself the wrath of
society, and was branded as an infidel. In the
interpretation of the Scriptures, and, indeed, in
all commentaries on authors of repute, there was a
constant indulgence in fanciful mystification and the
detection of concealed meanings, in the extracting
of which an amusing degree of ingenuity and industry
was often shown; but these hermeneutical writings,
as well as the polemical, are tedious beyond endurance;
with regard to the latter, the energy of their vindictive
violence is not sufficient to redeem them from contempt.
The relation of the Church to the
sister arts, painting and sculpture, was doubtless
fairly indicated at a subsequent time by the second
Council of Nicea, A.D. 787; their superstitious use
had been resumed. Sculpture has, however, never
forgotten the preference that was shown to her sister.
To this day she is a pagan, emulating in this the example
of the noblest of the sciences, Astronomy, who bears
in mind the great insults she has received from the
Church, and tolerates the name of no saint in the
visible heavens; the new worlds she discovers are dedicated
to Uranus, or Neptune, or other Olympian divinities.
Among the ecclesiastics there had always been many,
occasionally some of eminence, who set their faces
against the connexion of worship with art; thus Tertullian
of old had manifested his displeasure against Hermogenes,
on account of the two deadly sins into which he had
fallen, painting and marriage; but Gnostic Christianity
had approved, as Roman Christianity was now to approve,
of their union. To the Gnostics we owe the earliest
examples of our sacred images. The countenance
of our Saviour, along with those of Pythagoras, Plato,
Aristotle, appears on some of their engraved gems
and seals. Among the earlier fathers Justin
Martyn and Tertullian there was an impression
that the personal appearance of our Lord was ungainly;
that he was short of stature; and, at a later period
Cyril says, mean of aspect “even beyond the ordinary
race of men.” But these unsuitable delineations
were generally corrected in the fourth century, it
being then recognised that God could not dwell in a
humble form or low stature. The model eventually
received was perhaps that described in the spurious
epistle of Lentulus to the Roman senate:
“He was a man of tall and well-proportioned
form; his countenance severe and impressive, so as
to move the beholders at once with love and awe.
His hair was of an amber colour, reaching to his ears
with no radiation, and standing up from his ears clustering
and bright, and flowing down over his shoulders, parted
on the top according to the fashion of the Nazarenes.
The brow high and open; the complexion clear, with
a delicate tinge of red; the aspect frank and pleasing;
the nose and mouth finely formed; the beard thick,
parted, and of the colour of the hair; the eyes blue,
and exceedingly bright.” Subsequently the
oval countenance assumed an air of melancholy, which,
though eminently suggestive, can hardly be considered
as the type of manly beauty.
At first the cross was without any
adornment; it next had a lamb at the foot; and eventually
became the crucifix, sanctified with the form of the
dying Saviour. Of the Virgin Mary, destined in
later times to furnish so many beautiful types of
female loveliness, the earliest representations are
veiled. The Egyptian sculptors had thus depicted
Isis; the first form of the Virgin and child was the
counterpart of Isis and Horus. St. Augustine
says her countenance was unknown; there appears, however,
to have been a very early Christian tradition that
in complexion she was a brunette. Adventurous
artists by degrees removed the veil, and next to the
mere countenance added a full-grown figure like that
of a dignified Roman matron; then grouped her with
the divine child, the wise men, and other suggestions
of Scripture.
While thus the papacy was preparing
for an alliance with art, it did not forget to avail
itself of the vast advantages within its reach by
interfering in domestic life an interference
which the social demoralization of the time more than
ever permitted. A prodigious step in power was
made by assuming the cognizance of marriage, and the
determination of the numberless questions connected
with it. Once having discovered the influence
thus gained, the papacy never surrendered it; some
of the most important events in later history have
been determined by its action in this matter.
Perhaps even a greater power accrued from its assumption
of the cognizance of wills, and of questions respecting
the testamentary disposal of property. Though
in many respects, at the time we are now considering,
the papacy had separated itself from morality, had
become united to monachism, and was preparing for a
future alliance with political influences and military
power; though its indignation and censures were less
against personal wickedness than heresy of opinion,
toward which it was inexorable and remorseless, a
good effect arose from these assumptions upon domestic
life, particularly as regards the elevation of the
female sex. The power thus arising was re-enforced
by a continually-increasing rigour in the application
of penitential punishments. As in the course of
years the intellectual basis on which that power rested
became more doubtful, and therefore more open to attack,
the papacy became more sensitive and more exacting.
Pushed on by the influence of the lower population,
it fell into the depths of anthropomorphism, asserting
for the Virgin and the saints such attributes as omniscience,
omnipresence, omnipotence. Everywhere present,
they could always listen to prayer, and, if necessary,
control or arrest the course of Nature. As it
was certain that such doctrines must in the end be
overthrown, the inevitable day was put off by an instant
and vindictive repression of any want of conformity.
Despotism in the State and despotism in the Church
were upheld by despotism over thought.
From the acts of Pope Gregory the
Great, and his organization of the ideas of his age,
the paganization of religion in Italy and its alliance
with art, I have now to turn to the second topic to
which this chapter is devoted the relations
assumed by the papacy with the kings of France, by
which the work of Gregory was consolidated and upheld,
and diffused all over Europe.
The armies of the Saracens had wrested
from Christendom the western, southern, and eastern
countries of the Mediterranean; their fleets dominated
in that sea. Ecclesiastical policy had undergone
a revolution. Carthage, Alexandria, Jerusalem,
Antioch, had disappeared from the Christian system;
their bishops had passed away. Alone, of the great
episcopal seats, Constantinople and Rome were left.
To all human appearance, their fall seemed to be only
a question of time.
The disputes of the Bishop of Rome
with his African and Asiatic rivals had thus come
to an untimely end. With them nothing more remained
to be done; his communications with the emperor at
Constantinople were at the sufferance of the Mohammedan
navies. The imperial power was paralysed.
The pope was forced by events into isolation; he converted
it into independence.
But independence! how was that to
be asserted and maintained. In Italy itself the
Lombards seemed to be firmly seated, but they were
Arian heretics. Their presence and power were
incompatible with his. Already, in a political
sense, he was at their mercy.
One movement alone was open to him;
and, whether he rightly understood his position or
not, the stress of events forced him to make it.
It was an alliance with the Franks, who had successfully
resisted the Mohammedan power, and who were orthodox.
An ambitious Frank officer had resolved
to deprive his sovereign of the crown if the pope
would sanctify the deed. They came to an understanding.
The usurpation was consummated by the one and consecrated
by the other. It was then the interest of the
intrusive line of monarchs to magnify their Italian
confederate. In the spread of Roman principles
lay the consolidation of the new Frankish power.
It became desirable to compel the ignorant German
tribes to acknowledge in the pope the vicegerent of
God, even though the sword must be applied to them
for that purpose for thirty years.
The pope revolted against his Byzantine
sovereign on the question of images; but that was
a fictitious issue. He did not revolt against
his new ally, who fell into the same heresy.
He broke away from a weak and cruel master, and attached
himself on terms of equality to a confederate.
But from the first his eventual ascendancy was assured.
The representative of a system which is immortal must
finally gain supremacy over individuals and families,
who must die.
Though we cannot undervalue the labours
of the monks, who had already nominally brought many
portions of Europe to Christianity, the passage of
the centre of the Continent to its Age of Faith, was,
in an enlarged political sense, the true issue of
the empire of the Franks. The fiat of Charlemagne
put a stamp upon it which it bears to this day.
He converted an ecclesiastical fiction into a political
fact.
To understand this important event,
it is necessary to describe, 1st, the psychical state
of Central Europe; 2nd, the position of the pontiff
and his compact with the Franks. It is also necessary
to determine the actual religious value of the system
he represents, and this is best done through, 3rd,
the biography of the popes.
1st. As with the Arabs, so with
the barbarians of Europe. They pass from their
Age of Credulity to their Age of Faith without dwelling
long in the intermediate state of Inquiry. An
age of inquiry implies self-investigation, and the
absence of an authoritative teacher. But the
Arabs had had the Nestorians and the Jews, and to the
Germans the lessons of the monk were impressively
enforced by the convincing argument of the sword of
Charlemagne.
The military invasions of the south
by the barbarians were retaliated by missionary invasions
of the north. The aim of the former was to conquer,
that of their antagonists to convert, if antagonists
those can be called who sought to turn them from their
evil ways. The monk penetrated through their
most gloomy forests unarmed and defenceless; he found
his way alone to their fortresses. Nothing touches
the heart of a savage so profoundly as the greatness
of silent courage. Among the captives taken from
the south in war were often high-born women of great
beauty and purity of mind, and sometimes even bishops,
who, true to their religious principles, did not fail
to exert a happy and a holy influence on the tribes
among whom their lot was cast. One after another
the various nations submitted: the Vandals and
Gepidae in the fourth century; the Goths somewhat
earlier; the Franks at the end of the fifth; the Alemanni
and Lombards at the beginning of the sixth; the Bavarians,
Hessians, and Thuringians in the seventh and eighth.
Of these, all embraced the Arian form except the Franks,
who were converted by the Catholic clergy. In
truth, however, these nations were only Christianized
upon the surface, their conversion being indicated
by little more than their making the sign of the cross.
In all these movements women exercised an extraordinary
influence: thus Clotilda, the Queen of the Franks,
brought over to the faith her husband Clovis.
Bertha, the Queen of Kent, and Gisella, the Queen
of Hungary, led the way in their respective countries;
and under similar influences were converted the Duke
of Poland and the Czar Jarislaus. To women Europe
is thus greatly indebted, though the forms of religion
at the first were nothing more than the creed and
the Lord’s prayer. It has been truly said
that for these conversions three conditions were necessary a
devout female of the court, a national calamity, and
a monk. As to the people, they seem to have followed
the example of their rulers in blind subserviency,
altogether careless as to what the required faith might
be. The conversion of the ruler is naively taken
by historians as the conversion of the whole people.
As might be expected, a faith so lightly assumed at
the will or whim of the sovereign was often as lightly
cast aside; thus the Swedes, Bohemians, and Hungarians
relapsed into idolatry.
Among such apostasies it is interesting
to recall that of the inhabitants of Britain, to whom
Christianity was first introduced by the Roman legions,
and who might boast in Constantine the Great, and his
mother Helena, if they were really natives of that
country, that they had exercised no little influence
on the religion of the world. The biography of
Pelagius shows with what acuteness theological doctrines
were considered in those remote regions; but, after
the decline of Roman affairs, this promising state
of things was destroyed, and the clergy driven by
the pagan invaders to the inaccessible parts of Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland. The sight of some English
children exposed for sale in the slave-market at Rome
suggested to Gregory the Great the attempt of reconverting
the island. On his assuming the pontificate he
commissioned the monk Augustine for that purpose; and
after the usual exertion of female influence in the
court of King Ethelbert by Bertha, his Frankish princess,
and the usual vicissitudes of backsliding, the faith
gradually won its way throughout the whole country.
A little opposition occurred on the part of the ancient
clergy, who retained in their fastnesses the traditions
of the old times, particularly in regard to Easter.
But this at length disappeared; an intercourse sprang
up with Rome, and it became common for the clergy
and wealthy nobles to visit that city.
Displaying the same noble quality
which in our own times characterises it, British Christianity
did not fail to exert a proselytizing spirit.
As, at the end of the sixth century, Columban, an Irish
monk of Banchor, had gone forth as a missionary, passing
through France, Switzerland, and beyond the confines
of the ancient Roman empire, so about a century later
Boniface, an Englishman of Devonshire, repaired to
Germany, under a recommendation from the pope and
Charles Martel, and laboured among the Hessians and
Saxons, cutting down their sacred oaks, overturning
their altars, erecting churches, founding bishoprics,
and gaining at last, from the hands of the savages,
the crown of martyrdom. In the affinity of their
language to those of the countries to which they went,
these missionaries from the West found a very great
advantage.
It is the glory of Pope Formosus,
the same whose body underwent a posthumous trial,
that he converted the Bulgarians, a people who came
from the banks of the Volga. The fact that this
event was brought about by a picture representing
the judgment-day shows on what trifling circumstances
these successes turned. The Slavians were converted
by Greek missionaries, and for them the monk Cyril
invented an alphabet, as Ulphilas had done for the
Goths. The predatory Normans, who plundered the
churches in their forays, embraced Christianity on
settling in Normandy, as the Goths, in like circumstances,
had elsewhere done. The Scandinavians were converted
by St. Anschar.
Thus, partly by the preaching of missionaries,
partly by the example of monks, partly by the influence
of females, partly by the sword of the Frankish sovereigns,
partly by the great name of Rome, Europe was at last
nominally converted. The so-called religious wars
of Charlemagne, which lasted more than thirty years,
and which were attended by the atrocities always incident
to such undertakings, were doubtless as much, so far
as he was concerned, of a political as of a theological
nature. They were the embodiment of the understanding
that had been made with Rome by Pepin. Charlemagne
clearly comprehended the position and functions of
the Church; he never suffered it to intrude unduly
on the state. Regarding it as furnishing a bond
for uniting not only the various nations and tribes
of his empire, but even families and individuals together,
he ever extended to it a wise and liberal protection.
His mental condition prevented him from applying its
doctrines to the regulation of his own life, which
was often blemished by acts of violence and immorality.
From the point of view he occupied, he doubtless was
led to the conclusion that the maxims of religion are
intended for the edification and comfort of those who
occupy a humbler sphere, but that for a prince it
is only necessary to maintain appropriate political
relations with the Church. To him baptism was
the sign, not of salvation, but of the subjugation
of people; and the foundation of churches and monasteries,
the institution of bishoprics, and increase of the
clergy, a more trustworthy means of government than
military establishments. A priest must necessarily
lean on him for support, a lieutenant might revolt.
If thus Europe, by its conversion,
received from Rome an immense benefit, it repaid the
obligation at length by infusing into Latin Christianity
what was sadly needed a higher moral tone.
Earnestness is the attribute of savage life.
That divorce between morality and faith which the
southern nations had experienced was not possible among
these converts. If, by communicating many of
their barbarous and pagan conceptions to the Latin
faith, they gave it a tendency to develop itself in
an idolatrous form, their influence was not one of
unmitigated evil, for while they lowered the standard
of public belief, they elevated that of private life.
In truth, the contamination they imparted is often
over-rated. The infusion of paganism into religion
was far more due to the people of the classical countries.
The inhabitants of Italy and Greece were never really
alienated from the idolâtries of the old times.
At the best, they were only Christianized on the surface.
With many other mythological practices, they forced
image-worship on the clergy. But Charlemagne,
who, in this respect, may be looked upon as a true
representative of Frankish and German sentiment, totally
disapproved of that idolatry.
2nd. From this consideration
of the psychical revolution that had occurred in Central
Europe, I turn to an investigation of the position
of the papacy and its compact with the Franks.
Scarcely had the Arabs consolidated
their conquest of Africa when they passed into Spain,
and quickly, as will be related in a subsequent chapter,
subjugating that country, prepared to overwhelm Europe.
It was their ambition and their threat to preach the
unity of God in Rome. They reached the centre
of France, but were beaten in the great battle of
Tours by Charles Martel, the Duke of the Franks, A.D.
732. That battle fixed the religious destiny
of Europe. The Saracens did not, however, give
up their attempt. Three years afterward they returned
into Provence, and Charles was himself repulsed.
But by this time their power had expanded too extensively
for consolidation. It was already giving unmistakable
tokens of decomposition. Scarcely, indeed, had
Musa, the conqueror of Spain, succeeded in his expedition,
when he was arrested at the head of his army, and
ordered to give an account of his doings at Damascus.
It was the occurrence of such disputes among the Saracens
in Spain that constituted the true check to their
conquest of France. Charles Martel had permitted
Chilperic II. and Thierry IV. to retain the title
of king; but his foresight of approaching events seems
to be indicated by the circumstance that after the
death of the latter he abstained from appointing any
successor. He died A.D. 741, leaving a memory
detested by the Church of his own country on account
of his having been obliged to appropriate from its
property sufficient for the payment of his army.
He had taken a tithe from the revenues of the churches
and convents for that purpose. The ignorant clergy,
alive only to their present temporal interests, and
not appreciating the great salvation he had wrought
out for them, could never forgive him. Their
inconceivable greed could not bear to be taxed even
in its own defence. “It is because Prince
Charles,” says the Council of Kiersi to one of
his descendants, “was the first of all the kings
and princes of the Franks who separated and dismembered
the goods of the Church; it is for that sole cause
that he is eternally damned. We know, indeed,
that St. Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans, being in prayer,
was carried up into the world of spirits, and that
among the things which the Lord showed to him, he
beheld Charles tormented in the lowest depths of hell.
The angel who conducted him, being interrogated on
this matter, answered him that, in the judgment to
come, the soul and body of him who has taken, or who
has divided the goods of the Church, shall be delivered
over, even before the end of the world, to eternal
torments by the sentence of the saints, who shall
sit together with the Lord to judge him. This
act of sacrilege shall add to his own sins the accumulated
sins of all those who thought that they had purchased
their redemption by giving for the love of God their
goods to holy places, to the lights of divine worship,
and to the alms of the servants of Christ.”
This amusing but instructive quotation strikingly
shows how quickly the semi barbarian Frankish clergy
had caught the methods of Rome in the defence of temporal
possessions.
Pepin, the son of Charles Martel,
introduces us to an epoch and a policy resembling
in many respects that of Constantine the Great; for
he saw that by an alliance with the Church it would
be possible for him to displace his sovereign and
attain to kingly power. A thorough understanding
was entered upon between Pepin and the pope. Each
had his needs. One wanted the crown of France,
the other liberation from Constantinople and the Lombards.
Pepin commenced by enriching the clergy with immense
gifts, and assigning to the bishops seats in the assembly
of the nation. In thus consolidating ecclesiastical
power he occasioned a great social revolution, as
was manifested by the introduction of the Latin and
the disuse of the Frankic on those occasions, and by
the transmuting of military reviews into theological
assemblies. Meantime Pope Zachary, on his part,
made ready to accomplish his engagement, the chaplain
of Pepin being the intermedium of negotiation.
On the demand being formally made, the pope decided
that “he should be king who really possessed
the royal power.” Hereupon, in March, A.D.
752, Pepin caused himself to be raised by his soldiers
on a buckler and proclaimed King of the Franks.
To give solemnity to the event, he was anointed by
the bishops with oil. The deposed king, Childeric
III., was shut up in the convent of St. Omer.
Next year Pope Stephen III., driven to extremity,
applied to Pepin for assistance against the Lombards.
It was during these transactions that he fell upon
the device of enforcing his demand by a letter which
he feigned had been written by St. Peter to the Franks.
And now, visiting France, the pope, as an earnest of
his friendship, and as the token of his completion
of the contract, in the monastery of St. Denis, placed,
with his own hands, the diadem on Pepin’s brow,
and anointed him, his wife, and children, with “the
holy oil,” thereby reviving the Jewish system
of creating kings by anointment, and imparting to
his confederate “a divine right.”
Pepin now finally defeated the Lombards, and assigned
a part of the conquered territory to the pope.
Thus, by a successful soldier, two important events
had been accomplished a revolution in France,
attended by a change of dynasty, and a revolution
in Christendom the Bishop of Rome had become
a temporal sovereign. To the hilt of the sword
of France the keys of St. Peter were henceforth so
firmly bound that, though there have been great kings,
and conquerors, and statesmen who have wielded that
sword, not one to this day has been able, though many
have desired, to wrench the encumbrance away.
Charlemagne, on succeeding his father
Pepin, thoroughly developed his policy. At the
urgent entreaty of Pope Stephen III. he entered Italy,
subjugated the Lombards, and united the crown of Lombardy
to that of France. Upon the pagan Saxons burning
the church of Deventer, he commenced a war with them
which lasted thirty-three years, and ended in their
compulsory Christianization. As the circle of
his power extended, he everywhere founded churches
and established bishoprics, enriching them with territorial
possessions. To the petty sovereigns, as they
successively succumbed, he permitted the title of counts.
True to his own and his father’s understanding
with the pope, he invariably insisted on baptism as
the sign of submission, punishing with appalling barbarity
any resistance, as on the occasion of the revolt, A.D.
782, when, in cold blood, he beheaded in one day 4500
persons at Verden. Under such circumstances,
it is not to be wondered at that clerical influence
extended so fast; yet, rapid as was its development,
the power of Charlemagne was more so.
In the church of St. Peter at Rome,
on Christmas-day, A.D. 800, Pope Leo III., after the
celebration of the holy mysteries, suddenly placed
on the head of Charlemagne a diadem, amid the acclamations
of the people, “Long life and victory to Charles,
the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, the great
and pacific Emperor of the Romans.” His
head and body were anointed with the holy oil, and,
as was done in the case of the Caesars, the pontiff
himself saluted or adored him. In the coronation
oath Charlemagne promised to maintain the privileges
of the Church.
The noble title of “Emperor
of the West” was not inappropriate, for Charlemagne
ruled in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary.
An inferior dignity would not have been equal to his
deserts. His princely munificence to St. Peter
was worthy of the great occasion, and even in his
minor acts he exhibited a just appreciation of his
obligations to the apostle. He proceeded to make
in his dominions such changes in the Church organization
as the Italian policy required, substituting, for
instance, the Gregorian for the Ambrosian chant, and,
wherever his priests resisted, he took from them by
force their antiphonaries. As an example to insubordinates
he, at the request of the pope, burnt some of the
singers along with their books.
The rapid growth of the power of Charlemagne,
his overshadowing pre-eminence, and the subordinate
position of the pope, who had really become his Italian
lieutenant, are strikingly manifested by the event
of image-worship in the West. On this, as we
shall in another chapter see, the popes had revolted
from their iconoclastic sovereigns of Constantinople.
The second Council of Nicea had authorized image-worship,
but the good sense of Charlemagne was superior to such
idolatry. He openly expressed his disapproval,
and even dictated a work against it the
Carolinian books. The pope was therefore placed
in a singular dilemma, for not only had image-worship
been restored at Constantinople, and the original
cause of the dispute removed, but the new protector,
Charlemagne, had himself embraced iconoclasm.
However, it was not without reason that the pope at
this time avoided the discussion, for a profitable
sale of bones and relics, said to be those of saints
but in reality obtained from the catacombs of Rome,
had arisen. To the barbarian people of the north
these gloomy objects proved more acceptable than images
of wood, and the traffic, though contemptible, was
more honourable than the slave-trade in vassals and
peasant children which had been carried on with Jews
and Mohammedans. Like all the great statesmen
of antiquity, who were unable to comprehend the possibility
of a highly civilized society without the existence
of slavery, Charlemagne accepted that unfortunate
condition as a political necessity, and attempted
to draw from it as much benefit as it was capable
of yielding to the state. From certain classes
of slaves he appointed, by a system of apprenticeship,
those who should be devoted to the mechanical arts
and to trade. It was, however, slavery and warfare
which, during his own life, by making the possession
of property among small proprietors an absolute disadvantage,
prepared the way for that rapid dissolution of his
empire so quickly occurring after his death.
Yet, though Charlemagne thus accepted
the existence of slavery as a necessary political
evil, the evidences are not wanting that he was desirous
to check its abuses wherever he could. When the
Italian dukes accused Pope Adrian of selling his vassals
as slaves to the Saracens, Charlemagne made inquiry
into the matter, and, finding that transactions of
the kind had occurred in the port of Civita Vecchia,
though he did not choose to have so infamous a scandal
made public, he ever afterwards withdrew his countenance
from that pope. At that time a very extensive
child slave-trade was carried on with the Saracens
through the medium of the Jews, ecclesiastics as well
as barons selling the children of their serfs.
Though he never succeeded in learning
how to write, no one appreciated better than Charlemagne
the value of knowledge. He laboured assiduously
for the elevation and enlightenment of his people.
He collected together learned men; ordered his clergy
to turn their attention to letters; established schools
of religious music; built noble palaces, churches,
bridges; transferred, for the adornment of his capital,
Aix-la-Chapelle, statues from Italy; organized the
professions and trades of his cities, and gave to
his towns a police. Well might he be solicitous
that his clergy should not only become more devout,
but more learned. Very few of them knew how to
read, scarcely any to write. Of the first half
of the eighth century, a period of great interest,
since it includes the invasion of France by the Saracens,
and their expulsion, there is nothing more than the
most meagre annals; the clergy understood much better
the use of the sword than that of the pen. The
schools of Charlemagne proved a failure, not through
any fault of his, but because the age had no demand
for learning, and the Roman pontiffs and their clergy,
as far as they troubled themselves with any opinion
about the matter, thought that knowledge was of more
harm than good.
The private life of Charlemagne was
stained with great immoralities and crimes. He
indulged in a polygamy scarcely inferior to that of
the khalifs, solacing himself with not less than nine
wives and many concubines. He sought to increase
the circle of the former, or perhaps it should be
said, considering the greatness of his statesmanship,
to unite the Eastern and Western empires together
by a marriage with the Empress Irene. This was
that Irene who put out the eyes of her own son in
the porphyry chamber at Constantinople. His fame
extended into Asia. The Khalif Haroun al
Raschid, A.D. 801, sent him from Bagdad the keys of
our Saviour’s sepulchre as a mark of esteem from
the Commander of the Faithful to the greatest of Christian
kings. However, there was doubtless as much policy
as esteem in this, for the Asiatic khalifs perceived
the advantage of a good understanding with the power
that could control the émirs of Spain. Always
bearing in mind his engagement with the papacy, that
Roman Christianity should be enforced upon Europe
wherever his influence could reach, he remorselessly
carried into execution the penalty of death that he
had awarded to the crimes of, 1, refusing baptism;
2, false pretence of baptism; 3, relapse to idolatry;
4, the murder of a priest or bishop; 5, human sacrifice;
6, eating meat in Lent. To the pagan German his
sword was a grim, but a convincing missionary.
To the last he observed a savage fidelity to his bond.
He died A.D. 814.
Such was the compact that had been
established between the Church and the State.
As might be expected, the succeeding transactions exhibit
an alternate preponderance of one and of the other,
and the degradation of both in the end. Scarcely
was Charlemagne dead ere the imbecile character of
his son and successor, Louis the Pious, gave the Church
her opportunity. By the expulsion of his father’s
numerous concubines and mistresses, the scandals of
the palace were revealed. I have not the opportunity
to relate in detail how this monarch disgracefully
humiliated himself before the Church; how, under his
weak government, the slave-trade greatly increased;
how every shore, and, indeed, every country that could
be reached through a navigable river, was open to the
ravages of pirates, the Northmen extending their maraudings
even to the capture of great cities; how, in strong
contrast with the social decomposition into which
Europe was falling, Spain, under her Mohammedan rulers,
was becoming rich, populous, and great; how, on the
east, the Huns and Avars, ceasing their ravages, accepted
Christianity, and, under their diversity of interests
the nations that had been bound together by Charlemagne
separated into two divisions French and
German and civil wars between them ensued;
how, through the folly of the clergy, who vainly looked
for protection from relics instead of the sword, the
Saracens ranged uncontrolled all over the south, and
came within an hair’s-breadth of capturing Rome
itself; how France, at this time, had literally become
a theocracy, the clergy absorbing everything that was
worth having; how the pope, trembling at home, nevertheless
maintained an external power by interfering with domestic
life, as in the quarrel with King Lothaire II. and
his wife; how Italy, France, and Germany became, as
Africa and Syria had once been, full of miracles; how,
through these means the Church getting the advantage,
John VIII. thought it expedient to assert his right
of disposing of the imperial crown in the case of
Charles the Bald (the imperial supremacy that Charlemagne
had obtained in reality implied the eventual supremacy
of the pope); how an opportunity which occurred for
reconstructing the empire of the West under Charles
the Fat was thwarted by the imbecility of that sovereign,
an imbecility so great that his nobles were obliged
to depose him; how, thereupon, a number of new kingdoms
arose, and Europe fell, by an inevitable necessity,
into a political chaos; how, since there was thus
no protecting government, each great landowner had
to protect himself, and the rightfulness of private
war became recognised; how, through this evil state,
the strange consequence ensued of a great increase
in the population, it becoming the interest of every
lord to raise as many peasants as he could, offering
his lands on personal service, the value of an estate
being determined by the number of retainers it could
furnish, and hence arose the feudal system; how the
monarchical principle, once again getting the superiority,
asserted its power in Germany in Henry the Fowler
and his descendants, the three Othos; how, by these
great monarchs, the subjection of Italy was accomplished,
and the morality of the German clergy vindicated by
their attempts at the reformation of the papacy, which
fell to the last degree of degradation, becoming,
in the end, an appanage of the Counts of Tusculum,
and, shameful to be said, in some instances given
by prostitutes to their paramours or illegitimates,
in some, to mere boys of precociously dissolute life;
before long, A.D. 1045, it was actually to be sold
for money. We have now approached the close of
a thousand years from the birth of Christ; the evil
union of the Church and State, their rivalries, their
intrigues, their quarrels, had produced an inevitable
result, doing the same in the West that they had done
in the East; disorganizing the political system, and
ending in a universal social demoralization.
The absorption of small properties into large estates
steadily increased the number of slaves; where there
had once been many free families, there was now found
only a rich man. Even of this class the number
diminished by the same process of absorption, until
there were sparsely scattered here and there abbots
and counts with enormous estates worked by herds of
slaves, whose numbers, since sometimes one man possessed
more than 20,000 of them, might deceive us, if we did
not consider the vast surface over which they were
spread. Examined in that way, the West of Europe
proves to have been covered with forests, here and
there dotted with a convent or a town. From those
countries, once full of the splendid evidences of
Roman civilization, mankind was fast disappearing.
There was no political cause, until at a later time,
when the feudal system was developed, for calling
men into existence. Whenever there was a partial
peace, there was no occasion for the multiplication
of men beyond the intention of extracting from them
the largest possible revenue, a condition implying
their destruction. Soon even the necessity for
legislation ceased; events were left to take their
own course. Through the influence of the monks
the military spirit declined; a vile fetichism of
factitious relics, which were working miracles in
all directions, constituted the individual piety.
Whoever died without bequeathing a part of his property
to the Church, died without confession and the sacraments,
and forfeited Christian burial. Trial by battle,
and the ordeals of fire and boiling water, determined
innocence or guilt in those accused of crimes.
Between places at no great distance apart intercommunication
ceased, or, at most, was carried on as in the times
of the Trojan War, by the pedlar travelling with his
packs.
In these deplorable days there was
abundant reason to adopt the popular expectation that
the end of all things was at hand, and that the year
1000 would witness the destruction of the world.
Society was dissolving, the human race was disappearing,
and with difficulty the melancholy ruins of ancient
civilization could be traced. Such was the issue
of the second attempt at the union of political and
ecclesiastical power. In a former chapter we
saw what it had been in the East, now we have found
what it was in the West. Inaugurated in selfishness,
it strengthens itself by violence, is perpetuated
by ignorance, and yields as its inevitable result,
social ruin.
And while things were thus going to
wreck in the state, it was no better in the Church.
The ill-omened union between them was bearing its only
possible fruit, disgrace to both a solemn
warning to all future ages.
3d. This brings me to the third
and remaining topic I proposed to consider in this
chapter, to determine the actual religious value of
the system in process of being forced upon Europe,
using, for the purpose, that which must be admitted
as the best test the private lives of the
popes.
To some it might seem, considering
the interests of religion alone, desirable to omit
all biographical reference to the popes; but this
cannot be done with justice to the subject. The
essential principle of the papacy, that the Roman
pontiff is the vicar of Christ upon earth, necessarily
obtrudes his personal relations upon us. How shall
we understand his faith unless we see it illustrated
in his life? Indeed, the unhappy character of
those relations was the inciting cause of the movements
in Germany, France, and England, ending in the extinction
of the papacy as an actual political power, movements
to be understood only through a sufficient knowledge
of the private lives and opinions of the popes.
It is well, as far as possible, to abstain from burdening
systems with the imperfections of individuals.
In this case they are inseparably interwoven.
The signal peculiarity of the papacy is that, though
its history may be imposing, its biography is infamous.
I shall, however, forbear to speak of it in this latter
respect more than the occasion seems necessarily to
require; shall pass in silence some of those cases
which would profoundly shock my religious reader, and
therefore restrict myself to the ages between the
middle of the eighth and the middle of the eleventh
centuries, excusing myself to the impartial critic
by the apology that these were the ages with which
I have been chiefly concerned in this chapter.
On the death of Pope Paul I., who
had attained the pontificate A.D. 757, the Duke of
Nepi compelled some bishops to consecrate Constantine,
one of his brothers, as pope; but more legitimate
electors subsequently, A.D. 768, choosing Stephen
IV., the usurper and his adherents were severely punished;
the eyes of Constantine were put out; the tongue of
the Bishop Theodorus was amputated, and he was left
in a dungeon to expire in the agonies of thirst.
The nephews of Pope Adrian seized his successor, Pope
Leo III., A.D. 795, in the street, and, forcing him
into a neighbouring church, attempted to put out his
eyes and cut out his tongue; at a later period, this
pontiff trying to suppress a conspiracy to depose
him, Rome became the scene of rebellion, murder, and
conflagration. His successor, Stephen V., A.D.
816, was ignominiously driven from the city; his successor,
Paschal I., was accused of blinding and murdering
two ecclesiastics in the Lateran Palace; it was necessary
that imperial commissioners should investigate the
matter, but the pope died, after having exculpated
himself by oath before thirty bishops. John VIII.,
A.D. 872, unable to resist the Mohammedans, was compelled
to pay them tribute; the Bishop of Naples, maintaining
a secret alliance with them, received his share of
the plunder they collected. Him John excommunicated,
nor would he give him absolution unless he would betray
the chief Mohammedans and assassinate others himself.
There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to murder the
pope; some of the treasures of the Church were seized;
and the gate of St. Pancrazia was opened with false
keys, to admit the Saracens into the city. Formosus,
who had been engaged in these transactions, and excommunicated
as a conspirator for the murder of John, was subsequently
elected pope, A.D. 891; he was succeeded by Boniface
VI., A.D. 896, who had been deposed from the diaconate,
and again from the priesthood, for his immoral and
lewd life. By Stephen VII., who followed, the
dead body of Formosus was taken from the grave,
clothed in the papal habiliments, propped up in a
chair, tried before a council, and the preposterous
and indecent scene completed by cutting off three
of the fingers of the corpse and casting it into the
Tiber; but Stephen himself was destined to exemplify
how low the papacy had fallen: he was thrown into
prison and strangled. In the course of five years,
from A.D. 896 to A.D. 900, five popes were consecrated.
Leo V., who succeeded in A.D. 904, was in less than
two months thrown into prison by Christopher, one of
his chaplains, who usurped his place, and who, in
his turn, was shortly expelled from Rome by Sergius
III., who, by the aid of a military force, seized
the pontificate, A.D. 905. This man, according
to the testimony of the times, lived in criminal intercourse
with the celebrated prostitute Theodora, who, with
her daughters Marozia and Theodora, also prostitutes,
exercised an extraordinary control over him. The
love of Theodora was also shared by John X.:
she gave him first the archbishopric of Ravenna, and
then translated him to Rome, A.D. 915, as pope.
John was not unsuited to the times; he organized a
confederacy which perhaps prevented Rome from being
captured by the Saracens, and the world was astonished
and edified by the appearance of this warlike pontiff
at the head of his troops. By the love of Theodora,
as was said, he had maintained himself in the papacy
for fourteen years; by the intrigues and hatred of
her daughter Marozia he was overthrown. She surprised
him in the Lateran Palace; killed his brother Peter
before his face; threw him into prison, where he soon
died, smothered, as was asserted, with a pillow.
After a short interval Marozia made her own son pope
as John XI., A.D. 931. Many affirmed that Pope
Sergius was his father, but she herself inclined to
attribute him to her husband Alberic, whose brother
Guido she subsequently married. Another of her
sons, Alberic, so called from his supposed father,
jealous of his brother John, cast him and their mother
Marozia into prison. After a time Alberic’s
son was elected pope, A.D. 956; he assumed the title
of John XII., the amorous Marozia thus having given
a son and a grandson to the papacy. John was
only nineteen years old when he thus became the head
of Christendom. His reign was characterized by
the most shocking immoralities, so that the Emperor
Otho I. was compelled by the German clergy to interfere.
A synod was summoned for his trial in the Church of
St. Peter, before which it appeared that John had received
bribes for the consecration of bishops, that he had
ordained one who was but ten years old, and had performed
that ceremony over another in a stable; he was charged
with incest with one of his father’s concubines,
and with so many adulteries that the Lateran Palace
had become a brothel; he put out the eyes of one ecclesiastic
and castrated another, both dying in consequence of
their injuries; he was given to drunkenness, gambling,
and the invocation of Jupiter and Venus. When
cited to appear before the council, he sent word that
“he had gone out hunting;” and to the fathers
who remonstrated with him, he threateningly remarked
“that Judas, as well as the other disciples,
received from his master the power of binding and
loosing, but that as soon as he proved a traitor to
the common cause, the only power he retained was that
of binding his own neck.” Hereupon he was
deposed, and Leo VIII. elected in his stead, A.D.
963; but subsequently getting the upper hand, he seized
his antagonists, cut off the hand of one, the nose,
finger, tongue of others. His life was eventually
brought to an end by the vengeance of a man whose
wife he had seduced.
After such details it is almost needless
to allude to the annals of succeeding popes:
to relate that John XIII. was strangled in prison;
that Boniface VII. imprisoned Benedict VII., and killed
him by starvation; that John XIV. was secretly put
to death in the dungeons of the Castle of St. Angelo;
that the corpse of Boniface was dragged by the populace
through the streets. The sentiment of reverence
for the sovereign pontiff, nay, even of respect, had
become extinct in Rome; throughout Europe the clergy
were so shocked at the state of things, that, in their
indignation, they began to look with approbation on
the intention of the Emperor Otho to take from the
Italians their privilege of appointing the successor
of St. Peter, and confine it to his own family.
But his kinsman, Gregory V., whom he placed on the
pontifical throne, was very soon compelled by the
Romans to fly; his excommunications and religious
thunders were turned into derision by them; they were
too well acquainted with the true nature of those
terrors; they were living behind the scenes. A
terrible punishment awaited the Anti-pope John XVI.
Otho returned into Italy, seized him, put out his
eyes, cut off his nose and tongue, and sent him through
the streets mounted on an ass, with his face to the
tail, and a wine-bladder on his head. It seemed
impossible that things could become worse; yet Rome
had still to see Benedict IX., A.D. 1033, a boy of
less than twelve years, raised to the apostolic throne.
Of this pontiff, one of his successors, Victor III.,
declared that his life was so shameful, so foul, so
execrable, that he shuddered to describe it. He
ruled like a captain of banditti rather than a prelate.
The people at last, unable to bear his adulteries,
homicides, and abominations any longer, rose against
him. In despair of maintaining his position, he
put up the papacy to auction. It was bought by
a presbyter named John, who became Gregory VI., A.D.
1045.
More than a thousand years had elapsed
since the birth of our Saviour, and such was the condition
of Rome. Well may the historian shut the annals
of those times in disgust; well may the heart of the
Christian sink within him at such a catalogue of hideous
crimes. Well may he ask, Were these the vicegerents
of God upon earth these, who had truly
reached that goal beyond which the last effort of human
wickedness cannot pass?
Not until several centuries after
these events did public opinion come to the true and
philosophical conclusion the total rejection
of the divine claims of the papacy. For a time
the evils were attributed to the manner of the pontifical
election, as if that could by any possibility influence
the descent of a power which claimed to be supernatural
and under the immediate care of God. The manner
of election was this. The Roman ecclesiastics
recommended a candidate to the College of Cardinals;
their choice had to be ratified by the populace of
Rome, and, after that, the emperor must give his approval.
There were thus to be brought into agreement the machinations
of the lower ecclesiastics, the intrigues of the cardinals,
the clamours of the rabble of Rome, and the policy
of the emperor. Such a system must inevitably
break to pieces with its own incongruities. Though
we may wonder that men failed to see that it was merely
a human device, we cannot wonder that the emperors
perceived the necessity of taking the appointments
into their own hands, and that Gregory VII. was resolved
to confine it to the College of Cardinals, to the
exclusion of the emperor, the Roman people, and even
of the rest of Christendom an attempt in
which he succeeded.
No one can study the development of
the Italian ecclesiastical power without discovering
how completely it depended on human agency, too often
on human passion and intrigues; how completely wanting
it was of any mark of the Divine construction and
care the offspring of man, not of God,
and therefore bearing upon it the linéaments of
human passions, human virtues, and human sins.