READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
BOOK II.FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS I , A.D. 313-395.CHAPTER VI.
SUPPLEMENTARY.
While the empire was distracted by the Arian
controversy, the gospel penetrated into some countries beyond the bounds of the
Roman power.
Whatever may have been the effect produced in his
native country by the conversion of Queen Candace’s treasurer, recorded in the
Acts of the Apostles, it would appear to have been transitory; and the
Ethiopian or Abyssinian church owes its origin to an expedition made early in
the fourth century by Meropius, a philosopher of
Tyre, for the purpose of scientific inquiry. On his voyage homewards, he and
his companions were attacked at a place where they had landed in search of
water, and all were massacred except two youths, Edesius and Frumentius, the
relatives and pupils of Meropius. These were
carried to the king of the country, who advanced Edesius to be his cupbearer,
and Frumentius to be his secretary and treasurer. On the death of the king, who
left a boy as his heir, the two strangers, at the request of the widowed queen,
acted as regents of the kingdom until the prince came of age. Edesius then
returned to Tyre, where he became a presbyter. Frumentius, who, with the help
of such Christian traders as visited the country, had already introduced the
Christian doctrine and worship into Abyssinia, repaired to Alexandria, related
his story to Athanasius, and requested that a bishop might be sent to follow up
the work; whereupon Athanasius, considering that no one could be so fit for the
office as Frumentius himself, consecrated him to the bishopric of Axum. The
church thus founded continues to this day subject to the see of Alexandria—
“drinking”, as the Abyssinians themselves express it, “of the patriarch’s
well”. Its metropolitan is always an Egyptian monk, chosen and consecrated by
the Coptic patriarch
After the expulsion of Athanasius from his see in 356,
Constantius wrote to the princes of Axum, desiring that they would not shelter
the fugitive, and also that Frumentius might be sent to Alexandria, to receive
instruction in the faith from the Arian bishop, George. Athanasius, however,
was safe among the monks of Egypt, and it does not appear that the request as
to Frumentius met with any attention.
An Arian missionary, named Theophilus, is celebrated
by the historian of his party, Philostorgius, while his labours are not
unnaturally overlooked by the orthodox writers. He was a native of the
island of Diu, and, having been sent as a hostage to the imperial court, was
consecrated as a bishop by Eusebius of Nicomedia. Theophilus preached in
southern Arabia, and apparently also in Abyssinia and India, as well as in his
native island. In India he is said to have found the remains of an older
Christianity, which Philostorgius describes as heteroousian,
(i.e., holding that the Persons of the Godhead differ in
essence)—an assertion which seems to have had no other foundation than the fact
that the Indians were unacquainted with the terms which had been introduced
into the language of orthodox theology since the rise of the Arian controversy.
The conversion of the Iberians or Georgians is
referred to the reign of Constantine. Some of these barbarians, on an incursion
into the empire, had carried off among their captives a pious Christian woman,
whose religious exercises and mortifications were observed with surprise and
awe. After a time, a child—one of the king's children, according to
Socrates—fell sick, and, agreeably to the custom of the country, was carried
from one woman to another, in the hope that some one of them might be able to
cure him. The captive, on being at length consulted, disclaimed all knowledge
of physic, but, laying the child on a couch, said, “Christ, who healed many,
will heal this child also”; when, at her prayer, the boy recovered. The queen
was soon after cured in like manner; and the captive refused all recompense.
Next day the king, while hunting among the mountains, found himself enveloped
in a thick mist or darkness. After having called or his gods in vain, he
bethought himself of applying to the stranger's God, and the darkness
immediately cleared away. Other miracles are added to the story. The king and
queen gave their people the example of conversion, and the Iberians, on
application to Constantine, were supplied with a bishop and clergy
The Christian communities of Persia have been
mentioned as existing in the earlier period. The faith continued to make
progress in that country; and Constantine, soon after declaring his own
conversion, wrote in favour of the Christians to Sapor II, who was king of
Persia from 309 to 381. But the progress of a rival religion was watched with
jealousy and alarm by the magi; and on the breaking out of a war between Sapor
and Constantius, they represented to the king that the converts were attached
to the Roman interest. A persecution was begun by Sapor’s subjecting the
Christians to special and oppressive taxes. Their chief, Simeon, bishop of
Seleucia and Ctesiphon, was then seized, and was tarried into the presence of
the king, who required him to conform to the national religion, and, on his
refusal, sentenced him to imprisonment. As he was led away, Uthazanes,
an old eunuch, who had lately been persuaded to renounce Christianity, saluted
him reverentially; but the bishop turned away his face. Uthazanes, deeply affected by the reproach, broke out into
lamentation—“If my old and intimate friend thus disowns me, what may I
expect from my God whom I have denied?”. For these words he was summoned before
the king, and, after having withstood both threats and entreaties, was
condemned to death. Uthazanes had brought up Sapor;
he now begged a favour for the sake of his old kindness—that it might be
proclaimed that he was not guilty of treason, but was executed solely for being
a Christian. The king willingly assented, in the hope that the declaration
would deter his subjects from Christianity; but an opposite effect followed, as
the sight of the courage which could sacrifice even life for the gospel induced
many to embrace the Christian faith. Simeon and many others were put to death.
In the following year the severity of the persecution was increased; and
notices of martyrdoms are found from time to time throughout the remainder of
Sapor's reign.
We have already seen that the gospel was introduced
among the Goths by captives who were carried off during the reigns of Valerian
and Gallienus. Theophilus, bishop of the Goths, was among the members of the
Nicene council, and seems to have been the immediate predecessor of Ulfilas,
who, notwithstanding his Teutonic name, is said to have been descended from
Cappadocian captives. Ulfilas was probably born in 318, and was
consecrated as a bishop at the age of thirty—perhaps while employed on a
legation to the emperor Constantius, in 348. In 355 the persecution of
Athanaric, judge or prince of the Ostrogoths, who regarded the profession of
Christianity as a token of inclination to the Roman interest, compelled the
bishop to lead a large body of Goths across the Danube, and seek a refuge
within the empire; and it would seem that this exodus, as well as his labours
and influence among his people, contributed to suggest the title which was
bestowed on him by Constantius,—“the Moses of the Goths”. About fifteen years
later the persecution was renewed, and many of Athanaric’s subjects, who had
embraced Christianity, were put to death. In 376 Ulfilas was employed by
Fritigern, prince of the Visigoths—the division of the Gothic nation to which
he himself belonged, and among which his labours had been chiefly exercised—to
negotiate with Valens for permission to settle within the imperial territories;
and on the revolt of the nation against their new protectors, he was sent
on an unsuccessful mission to the emperor immediately before the battle of
Adrianople. The death of Ulfilas took place in 388, at Constantinople, where he
was endeavouring to mediate with Theodosius in behalf of his Arian subjects.
Ulfilas employed civilization as the handmaid of
religion. To him his countrymen were indebted for the invention of an alphabet,
and for a translation of the Scriptures—from which, it is said, the books of
Samuel and Kings were excluded, lest their warlike contents should be found too
congenial to the ferocity of the barbarians. The Goths received their bishop's
words as law and through his influence they were unhappily drawn away from the
orthodox faith, which they had at first professed. The date and the
circumstances of this change are subjects of much disputed Ulfilas, indeed,
appears to have been more distinguished for practical efficiency than for
theological knowledge, and to have imperfectly apprehended the importance of
the question between Arianism and Nicene orthodoxy. He is known to have
been associated with Acacius and Eudoxius at Constantinople in 360, and to have
signed the creed of Rimini; but it would seem that he nevertheless kept up his
connection with the Catholics after that time, and that the distinct profession
of Arianism among the Goths did not take place until the reign of Valens, when
it became a condition of their admission into the emperor's dominions. When
that heresy had been ejected from the church—when it had ceased to be debated
in councils and to exercise the learning and the acumen of cultivated
theologians—it gained a new importance as being the creed of the barbarian
multitudes who overran the empire.
The existence of lately-founded churches among the
Saracens on the borders of Arabia is mentioned by Eusebius. The roving bands of
this wild people were greatly impressed by the life of the monks who had
retired to the deserts, and they visited them with reverence. In the reign of
Valens, a Saracen queen, named Mavia, who had been at war with the Romans,
stipulated as a condition of peace that Moses, a solitary of renowned sanctity,
should be given to her nation as bishop. Moses reluctantly consented to undertake
the office, but absolutely refused to receive consecration from Lucius, the
Arian bishop of Alexandria; and he was eventually consecrated by some of the
orthodox bishops who were in exile.
RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE.
For nearly three hundred years the church had been
providentially left to develop itself as a society unconnected with the
powers of this world, and by the time when its faith was adopted by the
emperors of Rome, it had attained the condition of a great independent body,
with a regular and settled organization. But, although it had thus far appeared
as separate, it was not incapable of a connection with the state, in which the
religious element should hallow the secular, while the secular power in turn
should lend its influence for the advancement of religion. There was, however,
danger lest, in such a connection, one or both of the parties should forget
that the church is not a function of the state, but is itself a
divinely-instituted spiritual kingdom; and, while it was thus possible that
ecclesiastics might rely too much on the secular power, there was also the
opposite danger, that they might assume towards it an authority professedly
derived from heaven, but really unwarranted by any Christian principle.
When Constantine became a convert to the gospel, the
change found both parties imperfectly prepared for understanding the relations
which resulted from it. It was likely that the emperor, who was by office
Pontifex Maximus—the highest minister of heathen religion, and knowing no
authority in that system more sacred than his own,—would be unwilling to
accept, or even unable to conceive, the different position which was assigned
to him in his new communion. It was likely that the clergy, unused as they had
hitherto been to intercourse with persons of such exalted rank, would be
dazzled on finding themselves invited to associate with the sovereign of the
Roman world, and would be disposed to allow him an undue control in spiritual
affairs. Yet on the other hand, as Constantine became their pupil in religion,
the power nominally exercised by the emperor was virtually wielded by those
ecclesiastics who for the time held possession of his mind. And although
the party which had the ascendency during the last years of his reign, and throughout
that of Constantius, lent itself unduly to the assumptions of the emperors, yet
this servility was not without some good effect, inasmuch as the imperial
interference, however objectionable in itself, was thus veiled under the
appearance of regular ecclesiastical proceedings. The deprivations, ejections,
and intrusions of bishops were sanctioned by subservient synods; so that, in
respect of form, the age of Constantine and Constantius has not left the
embarrassing precedents which would have resulted if the temporal power had
been arrayed on one side and the church on the other, without the intervention
of a secular, unscrupulous, and numerous faction of ecclesiastics. And,
lamentable as it is that, almost in the first years of the connection between
church and state, the emperor should be seen on the side of heterodoxy, even
this also had its advantage. Whereas the patronage and co-operation of the
court might have lulled the orthodox into security, and they might thus have
silently and unconsciously yielded up their rights, as suspecting no evil from
a friend, the disfavour and discountenance which they met with guarded them
against such submission; they were forced to declare at the earliest stage that
the power of the emperor in spiritual things was not unlimited. And it may be
matter of instruction and of comfort in later times, to know that any
difficulties which may be experienced in dealing with those earthly powers to
which Christians are bound to yield a willing obedience in all lawful things,
were not without a parallel in that very age to which the imagination might be
disposed to attribute almost an ideal perfection in respect of the relations
between the church and the state.
Eusebius speaks of Constantine as a “kind of general
bishop”, and elsewhere relates that the emperor once told some of his episcopal
guests that, as they were bishops within the church, so he himself was bishop
without it. The meaning of these words has been disputed with a zeal which
would attribute too much both of precision and of importance to a saying
sportively uttered at table; but it is at least certain that Constantine acted
as if he believed himself entitled to watch over the church, to determine which
of conflicting opinions was orthodox, and to enforce theological decisions by
the strength of the secular power. His own appearance in the council of Nicaea
while he was yet unbaptized, the presidency of Constantius, while only a
catechumen, at the council of Antioch, and his deputation of lay officers to control
the synods of Rimini and Seleucia, are instances of the manner in which the
imperial superintendence was exerted. And yet (as has been before observed) in
all these cases, whatever there may have been of lay control, the formal
decision of matters was left to the voice of the bishops. The pains which were
taken to draw prelates of high personal or official authority—such as
Athanasius, Hosius, and Liberius— into a compliance with the measures of the
court, are also a remarkable testimony to the importance which was attached to
the episcopal judgments.
The introduction of general councils contributed
greatly to increase the imperial influence. These assemblies were necessarily
summoned by the emperor, since no spiritual authority possessed the universal
jurisdiction which was requisite for the purpose; their decisions were
confirmed by him, promulgated with his sanction, and enforced by civil
penalties of his appointment.
The emperor was regarded as the highest judge in all
causes. The bishops of Rome considered it a distinction to be allowed to plead
for themselves before his judgment-seat, after the example of St. Paul. But it
soon began to be felt that both bishops and presbyters were disposed to
carry to the imperial tribunal matters in which the judgment of their brethren
had been, or was likely to be, pronounced against them. In order to check this,
the council of Antioch, in 341, and that of Sardica, in 347, passed canons, by
which it was forbidden to haunt the court under pretext of suits, or to appeal
to the emperor except with the consent of the metropolitan and other bishops of
the province to which the appellant belonged. In the earlier times, it had been
usual for Christians, in order to avoid the scandal of exposing their
differences before heathen tribunals, to submit them to the arbitration of the
bishops. The influence which the bishops had thus acquired was greatly
increased by a law which is usually (though perhaps erroneously) referred to
Constantine. It was ordered that, if both parties in a case consented to submit
it to the episcopal decision, the sentence should be without appeal; and the
secular authorities were charged to carry it out. Many later enactments relate
to this subject. In some canons, persons who should decline the bishop's
jurisdiction are censured as showing a want of charity towards the brethren. By
this power of arbitration, the bishops were drawn into much secular business,
and incurred the risk of enmity and obloquy. To some of them the judicial
employment may possibly have been more agreeable than the more spiritual parts
of their function; but many, like St. Augustine, felt it as a grievous burden
and distraction, and some relieved themselves of the labour by appointing
clerical or lay delegates to act for them.
Constantius in 355 enacted that bishops should be
tried only by members of their own order—i.e., in synods. But this privilege
was limited by Gratian, who in 376 ordered that matters which concerned
religion and ecclesiastical discipline should belong to bishops and
ecclesiastical synods, but that criminal jurisdiction should be reserved to the
secular courts; and such was the general principle of the age. As, however,
crimes are also sins, and the boundaries which separate ecclesiastical from
secular questions are not always easy to determine, there arose frequent cases
of difficulty between secular punishment and ecclesiastical penance; indeed,
the legislation of the early part of the fifth century on this subject is
inconsistent with itself—showing at once the weakness of the emperors and the
watchfulness of the ecclesiastical authorities. In cases of crime the clerical
office was not as yet supposed to carry with it any exemption from the secular
jurisdiction.
The influence of the gospel, which had perhaps begun
in some degree to affect the Roman legislation even while paganism was yet the
religion of the state, was now more directly and more powerfully exerted
in this respect. Moral offences, of which former legislation had taken no
notice, were denounced; and at the same time a humaner spirit is found to interpose for the protection of the weak, for the restraint
of oppression, and for the mitigation of cruel punishments. The bishops were
often charged by law with the duty of befriending various classes of persons
who might stand in need of assistance; thus a law of Honorius, in 409, which
orders that judges should on every Sunday examine prisoners as to the treatment
which they received, imposes on the bishops the duty of superintending its
execution. As magistrates became Christian, the church exercised a supervision
over them which was of considerable effect; and sometimes the clergy pronounced
its censures on local governors who had exercised their power tyrannically.
Thus Athanasius excommunicated a governor of Libya; and Synesius, bishop of
Ptolemais, a generation later, excommunicated Andronicus, governor of
Pentapolis.
Intercession for offenders became an acknowledged duty
and privilege of the clergy, who often successfully interfered to save the
lives of criminals in the hope that penance might enable them to make their
peace with heaven. But this right of intercession was liable to abuse and
corruption. Some of the clergy sold their influence for money; monks and
others, in the latter part of the century, carried their extravagance so far as
forcibly to rescue malefactors on the way to execution; and laws were enacted
to check such perverse and disorderly exhibitions of humanity.
The privilege of asylum, which had belonged to some
temples, became attached to all churches; and although the earliest laws on the
subject date only from the last years of the century, they recognize the
privilege as having long before existed on the ground of popular opinion. In
the state of society which then was, the institution had many important uses;
but corruptions naturally crept in, and against these edicts were issued. Thus
Theodosius enacted in 392 that public debtors who took refuge in churches
should be delivered up, or else that their debts should be paid by the bishop
who sheltered them. The younger Theodosius, in 431-2, while he extended the
right of sanctuary to the whole precinct which surrounded churches, found it
expedient at the same time to guard the privilege against some misuses; and in
the following century further restrictions were imposed by Justinian.
The Hierarchy.
Of the changes among the lower clergy during this
period (besides the creation of some new offices which were required by the
necessities of the church) may be mentioned the institution of two local fraternities:
the copiatae of Constantinople and
the parabolani of Alexandria.
The copiatae or fossarii (grave-diggers) were employed in
burying the dead—especially the Christian poor, whose interment was free of
cost; their number was 1100 under Constantine, but was reduced to 950 by a law
of the younger Theodosius. It appears that similar guilds were established in
other populous cities. The parabolani (so
called from the hazardous nature of their duties) were appointed to attend on
the sick. In the dissensions of the Alexandrian church they acquired a character
for turbulence, so that in 416 the inhabitants of the city preferred a
complaint against them to Theodosius the Second. The parabolani were therefore laid under some restraints by the emperor, and their number was
reduced to 500; but two years later it was raised to 600. Both the copiatae and the parabolani were
reckoned as belonging to the clergy, and enrolment among them was sought for
the sake of the privileges and exemptions which were attached to it. In many
cases the membership appears to have been honorary—persons of wealth paying for
admission, enjoying the immunities, and taking no share in the duties. Against
this corruption a law of Theodosius II was directed.
The deacons, whose number in some of the greater
churches was still limited to seven, acquired an increase of importance in
proportion to the greater wealth which was entrusted to their administration.
The power of baptizing and of preaching was now occasionally conferred on them,
and some of them even took on themselves the priestly function as to the
consecration of the Eucharist; but this usurpation was strongly forbidden.
In some cases they claimed precedence of the presbyters, and would have
regarded it as a degradation to be ordained to the presbyterate, so that canons
were even found necessary to check their assumptions. In every considerable
church one of the deacons presided over the rest. It is uncertain at what time
this office of archdeacon was introduced : at Carthage it would seem to
have been towards the end of the third century, as it is not mentioned by St.
Cyprian, whereas, about fifty years later, Cecilian is described as archdeacon to Mensurius. The distinction of one deacon above
his brethren may perhaps have been originally a matter of personal eminence,
and may have afterwards come to be established as official. The archdeacon was
appointed by the bishop; he was his chief assistant in the government of the
church, and was generally regarded as likely to succeed to the bishopric. In
the end of the fourth century a similar presidency over the presbyters was
given in some churches to an archpriest (archipresbyter)
—to whom the administration of the diocese was intrusted in the absence or
incapacity of the bishop.
The position of the chorepiscopi was found to excite
the jealousy of the superior bishops. Their functions were therefore more
strictly limited by canons, and in some quarters a movement was made for the
suppression of the office. The council of Laodicea forbids the appointment of
bishops in villages and country places; it orders that, in their stead,
presbyters with the title of periodentae (circuit-visitors)—answering to the archdeacons or rural deans of our own
church—should be employed, and that the chorepiscopi already ordained should do
nothing without the approbation of the city bishops. In the following century,
however, chorepiscopi are mentioned as sitting in the council of Chalcedon,
although only as delegates of other bishops; and the title is found much later,
both in the east and in the west. Thus, the second council of Nicaea, in 787,
speaks of chorepiscopi as ordaining readers by permission of the bishops,—a
notice which seems to imply that they then belonged to the order of presbyters,
and were much the same with the periodentae intended by the Laodicean canon. The western chorepiscopi of the eighth and
ninth centuries will come under our notice hereafter.
The system of distinctions within the order of bishops
was now carried out more fully than in the former period. The religious
divisions of the Roman world had generally followed the civil divisions,
although this rule was not without exceptions; and thus, when Constantine
introduced a new partition of the empire into dioceses, each of which embraced
several provinces, a nearly corresponding arrangement naturally followed in the
church. The bishop of the chief city in each diocese rose to a pre-eminence
above the other metropolitans. These bishops usually received in the east the
title of exarch, and in the west that of primate; the most eminent of them were
afterwards styled patriarchs—a title which had formerly been given to all
bishops, and of which the new and restricted sense appears to have been adopted
from the Jews. The degree of authority exercised by patriarchs or exarchs was
not uniform. It was greatest at Alexandria, where the patriarch had the right
of consecrating all the bishops of Egypt and Libya without the intervention of
metropolitans. The bishop of Rome had a like power within his narrower
jurisdiction, where, as in Egypt, the grade of metropolitans had not yet been
introduced; but in other countries it was usual that the chief bishop should
consecrate the metropolitans, and that these should consecrate the inferior
bishops.
With the introduction of the larger ecclesiastical
divisions came that of synods collected from their whole extent. The patriarchs
or exarchs presided; and these councils became the highest ordinary authorities
in the affairs of the church.
The council of Nicaea recognizes three principal
sees—Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch—as presiding over the churches in their
respective quarters. Each of these three was at once the church of a great
capital, and was reckoned to have the honour of apostolical foundation. From
the time when Constantine raised Byzantium to its new dignity, the bishopric of
that city, which had previously been subject to the metropolitan of Heraclea,
the civil capital of Thrace, necessarily became an important position, insomuch
that, even before any formal grant of ecclesiastical privileges or precedence
had as yet been conferred on it, Eudoxius was supposed to be promoted by a
translation to Constantinople from the great and venerable see of Antioch. The
second general council enacted that the bishop of Constantinople should stand
next to the bishop of Rome, “forasmuch as it is a new Rome”—a reason which
clearly shows that, in the opinion of the assembled bishops, the secular
greatness of the old capital was the ground on which its ecclesiastical
precedence rested. The honour thus bestowed on Constantinople was not, however,
accompanied by any gift of jurisdiction.
The causes which, during the earlier period, had
acquired for Rome a pre-eminence over all other churches were, in the fourth
century, reinforced by new and important circumstances. Although within his own
city the bishop was restrained by the prevalence of heathenism among the
nobility, the removal of the court gave him a position of independence and
importance beyond what he could have obtained if the imperial splendour
had been displayed on the same scene with his own dignity; and the Arian
controversies greatly increased his influence in relation to the whole church.
In the distractions of the eastern Christians, the alliance of the west was
strongly desired by each party. The bishop of Rome, as being the chief pastor
in the western church, naturally became the organ of communication with his
oriental brethren, to whom he appeared as the representative of the whole west,
and almost as wielding its entire authority. Even where one of the oriental
parties protested against his interference, the Roman bishop gained by the
application of the other party for his aid, or by its consent to his
proceedings. Except during the temporary lapse of Liberius, the Roman influence
was steadily on the side of orthodoxy, and as Rome thus stood in honourable
contrast with the variations of the eastern bishops, its constancy acquired for
it strength as well as credit, and the triumph of the cause which it had
espoused contributed to the elevation of the see. Moreover, the old civil
analogy introduced a practice of referring for advice to Rome from all parts of
the west. The earliest extant answer to such an application is the synodical
letter of Siricius to Himerius,
bishop of Tarragona. But by degrees these “decretal epistles” rose more and
more from a tone of advice to one of direction and command; and they were no
longer written in the name of a synod, but in that of the pope alone.
The records of this time, however, while they show the
progress of Rome towards the position which she afterwards attained, are
utterly subversive of the pretence that that position belonged to her from the
beginning, and by virtue of divine appointment. Thus, when the council of
Nicaea, with a view to the schism of the Egyptian Meletius, ordained that the
bishop of Alexandria should, agreeably to ancient custom, have jurisdiction
over Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis, “forasmuch as this is also customary for
the Roman bishop”—and further, that “in Antioch and in other provinces the
privileges of churches should be preserved”—it is evident that no other right
over his suffragans is ascribed to the bishop of Rome than that which is also
acknowledged to belong to the bishop of Alexandria; and that the privileges of
these and of other sees are alike referred to ancient usage as their common
foundation.
Again, when the council of Sardica enacted that any
bishop who should wish to appeal from a synod might, with the consent of his
judges, apply to Julius, bishop of Rome, and that, if the bishop of Rome
thought fit, a new trial should be granted1—it is clear that the power assigned
to the Roman bishop is not recognized is one which he before possessed, but was
then conferred by the council. The bishop of Rome had no power of evoking the
cause from before another tribunal; he had no personal voice in the decision;
he could only receive appeals on the application of the councils from which
they were made—the power of making such appeals being limited to
bishops—and commit the trial of them to the bishops bordering on the
appellant's province, with the addition, if he should think fit, of legates
representing himself. Moreover, as the council of Sardica was composed of
western bishops only, there was no pretext for enforcing this canon on the
eastern church; and, as the occasion which led to the enactment was temporary,
so the mention of Julius by name, without any reference to his successors,
seems to indicate that the power conferred was temporary and personal, and was
granted in consideration of the pledges which the Roman bishop had given for
his adherence to the orthodox cause. Indeed, it may be said that this power was
only such as in ordinary circumstances would have been acknowledged to belong
to the emperor, and that it was transferred to Julius, because the exercise of
it could not be safely left in the hands of the Arian Constantius. In like
manner, when Gratian, in 378, with a view of withdrawing the partisans of
Ursicinus from secular tribunals, acceded to the request of a Roman synod that
the judgment of them should be committed to Damasus, the temporary and special
nature of the grant is inconsistent with any such idea as that the jurisdiction
of which it speaks had before belonged to the bishops of Rome, or was an
ordinary prerogative of their office.
The old Latin version of the Nicene canons, and
Rufinus in his summary of them, define the jurisdiction of the Roman bishop as
extending over the “suburbicarian churches”. The name of suburbicarian was
given to the provinces which composed the civil diocese of Rome—the seven
provinces of middle and lower Italy, with the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and
Sicily. To these the patriarchate of Rome was then limited—Milan, Aquileia, and
afterwards Ravenna, being independent centres of ecclesiastical government. And
since both language and historical facts combine to support this view, it
needless to consider seriously such constructions of the, canon as that which
would persuade us that by the “suburbicarian churches” were meant all those of
the western empire, or even all the churches of the world!
The interference of the Roman bishop was still
resisted whenever he attempted to invade the privileges of other churches. The
African and the eastern churches acted throughout in entire independence of the
Roman authority, and frequent canons were made against carrying causes out of
the provinces to which they belonged. There was no idea of any divine right of
superiority to other churches; for, although it was often said that the bishop
of Rome ought to be honoured as the successor of St. Peter, that apostle
himself was not yet regarded as more than the first among equals, nor were his
successors supposed to have inherited any higher distinction above their
brethren in the episcopate.
From the time of Constantine the members of the
Christian ministry attained a new social position, with secular advantages
which had until then been unknown. The exemption from curial offices, which was
granted to them by the first Christian emperor, was, indeed, withdrawn or
limited by his successors; but they enjoyed a valuable privilege in their
freedom from all ‘sordid’ offices, and from some of the public imposts,
although still liable to the land-tax, and to most of the ordinary burdens. The
taxes to be paid by ecclesiastics who were engaged in trade were regulated by
laws of Constantius, Valentinian, and Gratian; and from the fact that such laws
were passed, rather than a prohibition of trading, it may probably be inferred
that resources of this kind were still necessary for the support of some among
the clergy. The wealth of the body, however, was vastly increased. Constantine,
besides munificent occasional gifts, bestowed on them a stated allowance
of corn, which was revoked by Julian. Jovian restored a third part of this, and
promised to add the rest when the cessation of a famine then raging should
enable him to do so; but his reign ended before he could fulfil
his intention, and the promise was disregarded by his successors. Tithes
were now paid—not, however, by legal compulsion, but as a voluntary offering,
so that we need not wonder to find complaints of difficulty and irregularity in
the payment; and a very great addition of riches flowed in on the church in
consequence of the law of Constantine which allowed it to receive bequests of
property.
These changes naturally operated for evil as well as
for good. For the sake of the secular benefits connected with the ministry,
many unfit persons sought ordination; while the higher dignities of the church
became objects of ambition for men whose qualifications were not of a spiritual
kind. At the election of a bishop, unworthy arts were employed by candidates;
accusations which, whether true or false, give no agreeable idea of the
prevailing tone of morals, were very commonly brought by each faction against
the favourite of its opponents; and disgraceful tumults often took place.
The intercourse of courts was a trial for the bishops;
while in many it naturally produced subserviency, in others it led to a
mistaken exaltation of spiritual dignity in opposition to secular rank. Thus,
it is told with admiration that St. Martin of Tours, when at the court of
Maximus, allowed the empress to wait on him at table; and that, when the
emperor had desired him to drink first, and expected to receive the cup back
from him, the bishop passed it to his own chaplain, as being higher in honour
than any earthly potentate.
Luxury and pride increased among the clergy of the
great cities. St. Jerome agrees with Ammianus Marcellinus as to the excessive
pomp by which the Roman hierarchy was distinguished, the splendour of their
dress and equipages, the sumptuousness of their feasts; while the heathen
historian bears a testimony which is above suspicion to the contrast presented
by the virtue, simplicity, and self-denial of the provincial bishops and clergy
in general. Praetextatus, an eminent pagan magistrate, who was concerned in
suppressing the feuds of Damasus and Ursicinus, sarcastically told Damasus that
he himself would forthwith turn Christian, if he might have the bishopric of
Rome. The emperors found it necessary to restrain by law the practices of monks
and clergy for obtaining gifts and legacies. Thus Valentinian, by a law which
was addressed to Damasus, and was read in all the churches of the capital,
enacted that ecclesiastics and monks should not haunt the houses of widows or
of female wards; and that they should not accept anything by donation or will
from women who were connected with them by spiritual ties. Jerome, who draws
many lively pictures of the base devices by which some of his brethren
insinuated themselves into the favour of wealthy and aged persons, says, with
reference to this edict, “I do not complain of the law, but I grieve that we
should have deserved it”. Other acts followed, annulling all dispositions of
property which women on professing a religious life might make to the prejudice
of their natural heirs, and guarding against the evasions which might be
attempted by means of fictitious trusteeships. Such bequests were, however,
discouraged and often refused by the more conscientious bishops, such as St.
Ambrose and St. Augustine. And while we note the facts which show how in this
age, as in every other, the church but too truly realized those parables which
represent it as containing a mixture of evil amidst its good, we must not
overlook the noble spirit of munificence and self-denial which animated
multitudes of its bishops and clergy, or their exertions in such works of piety
and charity as the relief of the poor, the redemption of captives, the erection
of hospitals, and the adornment of the divine worship.
The changes of the fourth century tended to depress
the popular element in the church. By the acknowledgment of their religion on
the part of the state, by the increase of wealth, by their intercourse with
personages of the highest rank, by the frequency of synods collected from large
divisions of the church, and limited to their own order, by the importance
which accrued to them when questions of theology entered into politics, and
agitated the whole empire—the bishops were raised to a greater elevation than
before above the other orders of the clergy. The administration of the
church was more thrown into their hands; and in the election of bishops the
influence of the order became greater, chiefly in consequence of the factions
of the people. Thus, when a vacant see was disputed by exasperated parties, it
often happened that the prelates whose business it was to ratify the election,
suggested a third candidate by way of compromise, and that their nomination was
accepted. In some cases the election, instead of being held in the city for
which a bishop was to be appointed, was transferred to the metropolis of the
province. The privilege of choice, which was often injudiciously used by the
multitude, was gradually limited by canons which fixed the qualifications for
the episcopate. And, although the right of voting was not yet restricted to
persons of superior station, the emperor swayed the elections to the greater
sees—especially those of the cities in which he resided—and sometimes directly
nominated the bishops.
The orders of the ministry remained as before, but it
was not usual to proceed regularly through the lower grades to the higher. Thus
we find that very commonly deacons were raised to the episcopate, or
readers to the presbyterate, without passing through even a symbolical
ordination to the intermediate offices; and we have seen in the instances of
Ambrose and Nectarius that even unbaptized persons were chosen for bishops,
and, after receiving baptism, were advanced at once to the highest order of the
ministry.
The practice of forcible ordinations was a remarkable
feature of this age. The only expedient by which a person could protect himself
against the designs of a bishop or a congregation who considered him fit for
spiritual office, was that of swearing that he would not submit to be ordained;
for it was thought that one who had taken an oath of this kind ought not to be
compelled to forswear himself. When the custom of such ordinations had been
introduced, reluctance to undertake the ministerial function was often feigned
for the purpose of gaining importance. Both forced ordinations and the hasty
promotion of neophytes were after a time forbidden by canons and by imperial
edicts, in some of which a curious distinction was made between the case of
bishops who had been ordained without their own consent, and that of presbyters
or lower clergy in like circumstances. The latter were allowed to renounce
their orders; but this liberty was denied to the bishops, on the ground that
none were really worthy of the episcopate but such as were chosen against their
will. In the fifth century, ordination began to be employed as a means of
disqualifying persons who had been unfortunate in political life for taking any
further part in the public affairs of the world. Some of the latest
emperors of the west were set aside by this expedient.
The influence of the monastic spirit tended to advance
the practice of celibacy among the clergy, and the opinion of its obligation.
At the council of Nicaea, it was proposed that married bishops, presbyters, and
deacons should be compelled to abstain from intercourse with their wives; but
Paphnutius, an Egyptian bishop, strongly opposed the motion. He dwelt on the
holiness of Christian marriage, and represented the inexpediency of imposing on
the clergy a yoke which many of them might be unable to bear, and which might
therefore become the occasion of sin, and injurious to the church. It was, he
said, enough to adhere to the older law, by which marriage after the reception
of the higher orders was forbidden. The argument was strengthened by the
character of the speaker. He was honoured as a confessor, having lost his right
eye and had his left thigh hamstrung in the last persecution; he had a high
reputation for sanctity, so that he was even supposed to possess miraculous
power; his motives were above suspicion, as he himself lived in celibacy and
strict asceticism. Under his guidance, therefore, the council rejected the
proposal; and the example thus set by the most revered of ecclesiastical
assemblies was followed in other quarters. Thus, the council of Gangra, which
was held chiefly for the consideration of the errors imputed to Eustathius of Sebaste, condemns, among other extravagances connected with
this subject, the refusal to communicate with married priests. And in the
eastern churches generally, although the practice of celibacy or of abstinence
from conjugal intercourse became usual, it continued to the end of the century
to be voluntary.
In the west, an important step towards the
establishment of celibacy was taken by Siricius, in
his decretal epistle of the year 385, addressed to Himerius,
bishop of Tarragona. After stating that some clergymen had had children, and
had defended themselves by pleading the Mosaic law, he argues that the cases
are unlike, inasmuch as among the Jews the priesthood was hereditary, whereas
among Christians it is not so; and further that, as the Jewish priests
separated themselves from their wives during the periods of ministering in the
temple, so for the Christian clergy, who are always on duty, the separation
must be perpetual. He ordered that presbyters and deacons should abstain from
their wives; that such as had before violated this rule through ignorance
should be allowed to retain their places, but on condition of observing
continence, and without the hope of promotion; that if any one attempted to
defend the contrary practice, he should be deposed; that no man who had married
a widow, or who had been more than once married, should be eligible to the
ministry; and that clergy contracting such marriages should be deposed. The
frequency of enactments in pursuance of this decretal, and the mitigations of
its provisions which some of them contain, indicate that great difficulty was
found in enforcing it; and this inference is amply supported by other facts.
In proportion as the marriage of ecclesiastics was
discouraged, the practice of entertaining female companions or attendants in
their houses increased. The council of Nicaea enacted that no women should be
admitted in this capacity, except such as from near relationship or from age
might be regarded as beyond suspicion of improper familiarity with the clergy.
Monasticism.
THE monastic life received a vast impulse during the
fourth century. As the profession of Christianity was no longer a mark of
separation from the mass of men, some further distinction appeared necessary
for those who aspired to a higher life. Moreover, with the cessation of
persecution the opportunities of displaying heroism in confession and martyrdom
had ceased. Hence many persons, seeing the corruption which was now too
manifest in the nominally Christian society, and not understanding that the truer
and more courageous course was to work in the midst of the world and against
evil, thought to attain a more elevated spirituality by withdrawing from
mankind and devoting themselves to austerity of life and
to endeavours after undisturbed communion with heaven.
Paul, who has been mentioned as the first Christian
hermit, spent his life, from twenty-three to a hundred and thirteen, in the
desert, without contemporary fame or influenced In the year of his retirement,
A.D. 251, the more celebrated Antony was born of Christian parents at Coma, a
village in the Thebaid. We are told by his biographer (who, if he was not
himself the great Athanasius, is supposed to have written under his influence)
that in boyhood and youth Antony showed a thoughtful and religious character.
He had learnt to read and write his native Coptic, but never acquired even
the alphabet of Greek, and was unable to speak that language. Before reaching
the age of twenty he lost his parents, and came into possession of a
considerable property. One day he was struck by hearing in church the gospel of
the rich young man, who was charged to sell all that he had, give to the poor,
and follow the Saviour, that he might have treasure in heaven. Antony
forthwith made over his land to the inhabitants of his village, turned the rest
of his estate into money, and bestowed all on the poor, except a small portion
which he reserved for the maintenance of his only sister. On another occasion
he was impressed in like manner by the words, “Take no thought for the morrow”,
and, in order to fulfil the command, he parted with the remainder of his
property, committed his sister to a society of religious virgins, and embraced
an ascetic life.
At first he took up his abode near his own village;
for, says his biographer, such was then the practice of those who desired to
live religiously, when as yet there were no monasteries in the desert.
He laboured with his own hands, and gave away all that he could spare
from his necessities. He visited all the most famous ascetics whom he could
hear of —endeavouring to learn from each his distinguishing virtue, and to
combine all their graces in his own practice. After a time he shut himself up
in a tomb, from which he removed, ten years later, to a ruined castle near the
Red Sea. But, although he continually increased his mortifications, he found
that temptation followed him from one retreat to another. He fancied himself
beset by devils in all manner of frightful shapes, and at other times by
worldly thoughts or by sensual enticements. The noise of his conflicts with the
enemy was heard by those who passed by his dwelling; more than once he was
found almost dead from the chastisement which had been inflicted on him by his
ghostly assailants. Antony became famous: many persons made pilgrimages to see
him; and having spent twenty years in his castle, without either leaving its
walls or admitting any one within them, he went forth and received disciples,
who settled around him, studding the desert with their cells.
The persecution under Maximin drew Antony to
Alexandria, where he attended on the sufferers, and in every possible exposed
himself to death; but when the heat of the danger had passed over, he concluded
that the crown of martyrdom, to which he had aspired, was not intended for him,
and, wishing to escape from the oppressiveness of the admiration which waited
on him, he sought out, under the guidance of some Saracens, who were
miraculously thrown in his way, a solitude more remote than that in which he
had before lived. His abode was now a cave in the side of a lofty mountain,
with a supply of cool water and the shade of a few palm-trees beside it; he
cultivated a small patch of corn and vegetables, that he might be able not only
to spare others the labour of supplying him with bread, but to furnish
something for the refreshment of visitors. The beasts of the desert, in
resorting to the water, damaged his crops; but he gently laid hold of one, and
said to them, “Why do you injure me, when I do you no hurt? Depart, and, in the
name of the Lord, come hither no more!” and his charge was obeyed. The more
Antony withdrew from the world, the mere eagerly was he followed. Multitudes
flocked to him, and imitators of his manner of life arose in great numbers. He
reconciled enemies, comforted mourners, and advised in spiritual concerns.
His interposition was often requested in behalf of the
oppressed, and was never exerted in vain. When any such business had drawn him
to leave his cell, he returned as soon as possible: “A monk out of his
solitude”, he said, “is like a fish out of water”. Constantine and his sons
sought his correspondence, entreated his prayers, and invited him to their
courts; but, instead of being elated by the honour, he said to his
disciples, “Marvel not if the emperor writes to us, since he is a man; but
rather marvel that God hath written his laws for men, and hath spoken them to
us by his Son”. In the Arian controversies, Antony and his monks were steady
and powerful supporters of orthodoxy. He wrote to Constantine, urging the
recall of Athanasius from his first exile, and received an answer expressed in
terms of high respect. In order to aid the orthodox cause, he paid a second
visit to Alexandria, where his appearance made even a greater impression than
before, and many pagans were converted in consequence. He was
favoured with visions and revelations for the comfort of the brethren in
the faith; and in cases of doubt he prayed for direction, and received
instructions from above. Innumerable miracles were ascribed to him, and he
supposed himself to work them, but was free from all pride on account of the
gift. His ghostly enemies still continued their assaults, and philosophers
frequently attacked him, in the hope of turning his illiteracy into ridicule;
but the firmness of his faith, together with his natural shrewdness, gave him
the victory alike over men and demons. Severe as his habits were, he had
nothing of the savageness which became too common among his followers; he well
understood the dangers of the solitary life, and was earnest in warning against
a reliance on the mere outward form of monachism.
Antony lived to the age of a hundred and five, and
died a few days before Athanasius sought a refuge among the monks of the desert
in 356. Of his two sheepskins he bequeathed one to the bishop of Alexandria,
and the other to Serapion, bishop of Thmuis. A
cloak, the gift of Athanasius, which had been worn for many years, was to be
restored to the donor, and the hermit's garment of hair-cloth fell to two
disciples who had long been his especial attendants. He charged these disciples
to bury him in a place unknown to all but themselves, lest his remains should
be embalmed and kept above ground—a manner of showing reverence to deceased
saints which he had often endeavoured to suppress.
The coenobitic system—that of ascetics living in a
community —originated with Pachomius, who was, like Antony, a native of
the Thebaid. The founder was born in 292, was converted to Christianity,
and practised rigid austerities under the direction of a
solitary named Palaemon, until he was visited by an angel, who told him
that, as he had made sufficient progress in the monastic life, he must now
become a teacher of others, and gave him a code of rules, written on a brazen
tablet, which the disciples of Pachomius professed to have in their
possession. Pachomius then instituted a society in an island of the
Nile called Tabenne, which had been indicated to
him by a voice from heaven. The brotherhood was soon extended, so that before
the founder’s death it embraced eight monasteries, with 3,000 inmates (of whom
1,400 were in the mother-establishment): and in the beginning of the following
century the whole number of monks was not less than 5o,ooo.
The monks lived in cells, each of which contained
three. They were under engagements of absolute obedience to the commands of a
chief, who was called abbot (from a Syriac word signifying father),
or archimandrite (from the Greek mandra,
a sheepfold). Under him each of the monasteries was governed by a head of its
own, and the chief abbot from time to time made a circuit of visitation. The
whole society assembled at the mother monastery twice every year —at the Easter
festival and in the month of August. The monks were, by direction of the brazen
tablet, divided into twenty-four classes, which took their names from the Greek
alphabet, and were arranged according to the characters of the individuals;
thus the simplest were in the class which bore the name of the letter I, while
the more knowing were ranked under the letters of more complicated form. A
strict community of all things was enforced, so that it was considered as a
serious breach of discipline to speak of ‘my’ coat, or book, or pen. The monks
employed themselves in agriculture, basket-weaving, rope-making, and other
kinds of industry. The produce of their labour was carried down the
Nile in boats belonging to the society, and manned by monks; and the money
which it fetched in the markets at Alexandria was not only enough for their own
support, but enabled them to perform works of charity. They prayed many times a
day, fasted on the fourth and sixth days of the week, and communicated on the
Sabbath and oil the Lord's day. Their meals were taken in common—each being
preceded by psalmody. They ate in silence, and with their hoods drawn over
their faces, so that no one might see his neighbours, or anything but the fare
set before him. The heavenly rule was not stringent as to the quantity of
food—ordaining only that each monk should labour in proportion to his
eating; but most of them carried their abstinence beyond the letter of its
requirements. The sick were tended with remarkable care. The monks had a
peculiar dress, the chief article of which was a goatskin, in imitation of
Elijah, who was regarded as a pattern of the monastic life. They were never to
undress, except that at communicating they unloosened their girdles. They slept
with their clothes on, and in chairs so constructed as to keep them almost in a
standing posture.
Pachomius had a sister, whom the fame of his
institution induced to visit Tabenne. On being
informed of her arrival, the abbot desired the porter of the monastery to beg
that she would be content with the assurance of his welfare; and to inform her
that, if she were disposed to imitate his manner of life, he would cause a
monastery to be provided for her at a distance from him. This message had the
effect which Pachomius intended; the monastery was built for his sister by
monks from Tabenne; and in a short time she
found herself abbess of a large community of women, regulated by a code which
her brother had framed on the model of his own, and subject to his orders,
although he never personally visited it. After this first example the formation
of such societies was rapid—the female recluses being styled nuns—a title of
uncertain derivation and meaning. Pachomius died in 348.
About the same time
when Pachomius established his order at Tabenne,
the elder Macarius took up his abode in the desert of Scetis—a vast solitude near the Libyan frontier of
Egypt—and Ammon settled on the Nitrian or Nitre mountain.
Around these chiefs were soon gathered large numbers of monks, living in
separate cells, which either were solitary or were grouped together in clusters
called laurae. The monks met on the first
and last days of the week for public worship; if any one were absent
it was concluded that he must be sick, and some of the brethren were sent to
visit his cell. Except on such occasions they never spoke. The Nitrian monks were reckoned to be about 5,000 in the
end of the century.
The monastic system was speedily extended beyond the
borders of Egypt. In Syria it was introduced by Hilarion, a pupil and
imitator of Antony, who lived fifty years in the desert near Gaza. In Mesopotamia
it was eagerly welcomed, and derived especial lustre from the genius and
piety of the mystic St. Ephrem. Eustathius bishop of Sebaste established monasteries in Armenia, and, as has
been already mentioned, St. Basil organized societies of coenobites in
Pontus and Cappadocia. Athanasius, on his visit to Rome in 340, was accompanied
by some Egyptian monks, who were the first that were seen in the west. Their
wild and rude appearance excited the disgust of the Romans, but with many this
feeling was soon exchanged for reverence. The profession of religious celibacy
found votaries among the younger ladies of the capital, and among the earliest
of these who embraced it was Marcellina, the sister of St. Ambrose. The
zeal with which Ambrose, after becoming a bishop, advocated the cause of
celibacy, may perhaps have been in some measure prompted by his sister. He
wrote treatises on the subject, maintaining that young women ought to embrace
the virgin life in defiance of the will of their parents, and fortifying his
argument by tales of judgments which had befallen persons who dared to dissuade
their relatives from such a course. He extolled virginity in his sermons — even
(as he says) to the weariness of his hearers. The matrons of his
city endeavoured to preserve their daughters from the fascination of
these discourses by forcibly keeping them at home; but crowds of virgins from
other quarters—some of them even from Mauritania—flocked to seek consecration
at the hands of the bishop of Milan. The little islands on the coasts of Italy
and Dalmatia became sprinkled with monasteries and cells. St. Martin, who
had lived as a monk in the island of Gallinaria,
introduced monasticism into Gaul, built religious houses near Poitiers and
Tours, and was followed to his grave by two thousand of the brethren. In Africa
monasticism made less progress than elsewhere. It did not obtain any footing
until it was introduced by St. Augustine, within the last ten years of the
century; nor was the authority of that great bishop, or even the example which
he gave by living in coenobite fashion with his clergy, sufficient to
attract to the monastic life any but persons of the Tower ranks. Salvian, about
the year 450, witnesses that it still continued to be unpopular in Africa, and
that monks were objects of persecution in that country.
The rules and habits of the monastic societies
differed according to circumstances, and according to the judgment of their
founders. Industrial occupations —such as field-labour, building, weaving, or the
manufacture of nets, baskets, and sandals—were generally prescribed in the
east, and Augustine wrote a treatise against those monks who wished to be
exempt from these employments. But St. Martin regarded such things as likely to
become hindrances to devotion, and would allow no other manual work than that
the younger brethren should transcribe books. The monks of Gaul, indeed, having
ample employment for their energies in combating the idolatry and superstition
of the barbarians among whom they were placed, did not need to have their hours
relieved from vacancy in the same manner as the inhabitants of the Egyptian or
Syrian deserts. As to food and clothing, also, the varieties of climate were
considered. “A large appetite”, says Martin’s biographer, “is gluttony in
Greeks, but in Gauls it is nature”.
Pachomius required a probation of three years
before admission into his order, and a similar rule was adopted in other
societies. There was as yet no vow exacted at entrance, although St. Basil
suggests that a formal profession should be required; nor was the profession of
monasticism irrevocable, for, although withdrawal was a subject for penance, it
was yet in some cases even recommended as the safest course.
All the chief teachers of the age, both in the east
and in the west, vied with each other in the praise of celibacy and
monasticism. St. Jerome, in particular—the most learned man of his day, who may
be regarded as the connecting link between the eastern and the Latin divisions
of the church—exercised a powerful influence in the promotion
of monachism, and the story of his life belongs in great part to the
general history of the subject.
This celebrated teacher of the church —in whom we see
extraordinary intellectual gifts and a sincere zeal for the service of Christ
strangely combined with extravagance of opinion and conduct, greediness of
power and authority, pride, vanity, violent irritability, and extreme
bitterness of temper— was born of Christian parents at Stridon,
on the borders of Pannonia and Dalmatian He studied at Rome under Donatus,
the commentator on Virgil, and, after having reached manhood, felt himself
called to a religious life, and was baptized. After having travelled in Gaul
and other countries, he withdrew in 374 to the desert of Chalcis, eastward of
Syria, where he entered on a course of the most violent mortifications. But the
impulses of sensuality, to which he confesses that he had yielded before his
baptism, revived in the solitude where he had hoped to find freedom from temptation.
He strove against them by fasting and prayer; and, wishing to add some
humiliating occupation to these exercises, he began the study of Hebrew under a
converted Jew—the language being recommended for his purpose by the indignity
of learning an alphabet, by the unmusical sound of the words, and by the
unadorned plainness (as Jerome considered it) of the sacred writings. The
acquisition proved valuable in a degree more than sufficient to compensate for
the injury which he tells us that his Latin style, and even his pronunciation,
had suffered from it.
Jerome had devoted himself with zeal to classical
literature, while he despised the Scriptures for their simplicity. The bent of
his studies was changed by a remarkable incident, either while he was residing
at Antioch before betaking himself to the desert, or during his retirement. He
had a severe illness, and was supposed to be dead, when he found himself placed
in the presence of the Judge, and, on being asked his condition, answered that
he was a Christian. “Thou liest”, it was said;
“thou art not a Christian, but a Ciceronian; for where thy treasure is, there
is thy heart also”. He was severely beaten, but at his earnest entreaty, and
through the intercession of the saints who stood around, his life was spared in
pity of his youth. He swore never again to open a heathen book, and on
returning to the world found, as he tells us, that his shoulders were black and
his body aching from the blows which he had received. Jerome seems to have
afterwards dealt with this story according to his convenience—treating it as a
solemn reality when he wished to dissuade others from the study of secular
learning, and as a mere dream when he found himself unable to deny that he had
not strictly observed his oath. In later ages his vision was often pleaded
in favour both of an indolent unwillingness to study and of a
fanatical contempt of letters.
The controversies of the time disquieted even the
desert. Jerome quarrelled with the neighbouring monks as to
the disputes of Meletius, Paulinus, and the Apollinarian
Vitalis for the possession of the see of Antioch, and as to the use of the
term hypostasis. An appeal to Damasus of Rome for direction
seems to have decided him in favour of Paulinus he left the
desert in 377, and in the following year was ordained presbyter by that bishop,
with a stipulation that he should not be bound to any particular sphere of
duty. After having spent some time at Constantinople, during the episcopate of
Gregory Nazianzen, whom he greatly revered, he settled in 382 at Rome, where he
acted as ecclesiastical secretary to Damasus, and assisted him in his
studies.
This position, with his talents, his learning, and the
reputation of religious experience which he had brought from the east, gave him
the means of powerfully forwarding the cause of monasticism and celibacy. He
soon gained an immense influence among the Roman ladies of rank, among whom
Marcella, Asella, Paula, and Fabiola were conspicuous. He directed
their spiritual life; he read and explained the Scriptures to them, while their
eager questions often went beyond his power of answering; he endeavoured to
draw all women into a resolution to preserve their virginity or their
widowhood, and to engage in a course of asceticism. When remarks were made on
his confining his instructions to the weaker sex, he answered that if men would
ask him about Scripture he would not occupy himself with women. When charged
with disparaging marriage, he answered that he praised it, inasmuch as marriage
gave birth to virgins. The religion which Jerome taught these female pupils was
not without its temptations to pride, from which it may be doubted whether his
warnings were sufficient to preserve them. They were charged to seclude
themselves from all other persons; the virgin Eustochium was exhorted
to avoid all intercourse with married women as corrupting. The pursuits of
piety and of unusual learning animated them to despise the ordinary amusements
of the world; and they were taught to regard such amusements, without any
distinction, as sins of the most deadly kind. On those who followed his
directions Jerome lavished hyperbolical praises. He tells them that a mother
who gives up her daughter to celibacy becomes the “mother-in-law of God”—an
expression which not unnaturally gave occasion for charges of profanity. One of
his epistles is an elaborate panegyric on Asella, written to Marcella,
whom, with an amusing show of gravity, he begs not to communicate it to her
friend who was the subject of it. His eulogium on Paula after her death begins
thus—“If all the members of my body were turned into tongues, and all my joints
were to utter human voices, I should be unable to say anything worthy of the
holy and venerable Paula's virtues”. Eustochium he styles “the precious
pearl”—“the precious jewel of virginity and of the church”. She, he says, “in
gathering the flowers of virginity”, answers to the good ground in the parable
which yielded an hundredfold, while her sister Paulina, who had died in
wedlock, was as that which brought forth thirty-fold, and their mother, the
widowed Paula, as that which brought forth sixty-fold. With no less zeal he
extols Demetrias, a member of the great Anician family,
who with her mother Juliana had been driven by the calamities of Rome to seek a
refuge in Africa. On the eve of the day appointed for her marriage, this
“foremost maiden of the Roman world for nobility and wealth” declared her
resolution to embrace a life of celibacy. Augustine, Jerome, and other eminent
teachers wrote to her on the occasion; among them Pelagius, whose peculiar
tenets were then beginning to attract attention, addressed to her, at her
mother’s request, an elaborate epistle, in which his errors were so strongly
expressed that Augustine and Alypius thought it necessary to
counteract the effect of it by writing jointly to Juliana. “What an exultation
was there throughout the whole family!” exclaims Jerome. “As if from a fruitful
root, a multitude of virgins sprang up at once, and a crowd
of dependants and servants followed the example of their pattern and
mistress. Through every house ran a fervour of professing virginity.
Nay, I say too little—all the churches throughout Africa danced, as it were,
for joy. The fame of the act penetrated not only to cities, towns, and
villages, but even to the very tents of the barbarians. All the islands between
Africa and Italy were filled with the rumour; and the rejoicings,
unchecked in their progress, ran further and further”. He goes on to say that
Rome had put off her mourning garments—regarding the “perfect conversion” of
her child as a token of divine favour towards herself—a compensation
for the calamities which she had lately endured; that the shores of the
Mediterranean and the regions of the east resounded with celebrations
of Demetrias. “Even now”, he tells her, in words which admit of more than
one application, “you have received, O virgin, more than you have offered.
Whereas only one province had known you as the bride of man, the whole world
has heard of you as the virgin of Christ”. The constant dwelling on the subject
of virginity in writing to such correspondents—the strange, and sometimes
grossly indecent, comparisons with earthly love by which Jerome illustrates
their mystical union with the heavenly bridegroom—are singularly at variance
with modern ideas of delicacy. Nor, indeed, is it easy to understand why the
choice of an unmarried life—which among ourselves is an everyday effect of mere
economical prudence—should be extravagantly magnified as the loftiest reach of
heroic sanctity.
Of the Roman ladies who fell under the influence of
Jerome, Paula and her daughter Eustochium are the most intimately
connected with his history. Paula was born in 347. Her father was said to be
descended from Agamemnon; her mother from the Scipios and
the Gracchi. Her husband, Toxotius, who traced
his line-age through the Julian family to Aeneas, died in 380, leaving her with
a young son of his own name, and with four daughters—Blaesilla,
Paulina, Eustochium, and Rufina. Paula had already exchanged the
luxury and delicacy of her former life for a course of strict religion before
she became acquainted with Jerome. Eustochium, who had been trained under
the care of the noble and pious widow Marcella, was the first Roman maiden of
high birth who dedicated her virginity to God. At the desire of her uncle Hymetius, his wife, Praetextata, once more attired her
after the fashion of this world, in the hope that she might be persuaded to
abandon her resolution; but Jerome relates that in the same night the matron
was visited in her sleep by an angel of terrible countenance and voice, who
told her that since she had preferred her husband's command to Christ's, the
sacrilegious hands which had touched the virgin's head should wither; that
within five months she would be carried off to hell; and unless she repented
forthwith, her husband and sons should be taken from her in one day.
These threatenings (he says) were all
fulfilled; and he does not fail to draw a moral for others from the fate
of Praetextata.
Blaesilla, the eldest daughter of Paula, became a widow within seven months after
her marriage. On her recovery from a dangerous illness, she devoted herself, by
what is styled "”a sort of second baptism”, to prayer
and mortification. Her tears flowed, not for the loss of her husband, but
for the irreparable forfeiture of the virgin's crown. She learnt Hebrew with wonderful
rapidity, and contended with her mother which of them should commit to memory
and should chant the greater number of psalms in the original. After three
months of this life Blaesilla died, her end
having apparently been hastened by her austerities. At her funeral, which was
conducted with pomp suitable to her rank, Paula was greatly agitated, and she
was carried home as if dead. The crowd of spectators burst forth into loud
cries, “See how she weeps for her child, after having killed her with fasting!”
and they were clamorous for the death or banishment of the monks, by whose arts
they declared that both mother and daughter had been bewitched. Jerome, who was
especially aimed at, wrote to reprove Paula for having, by her exhibition of
grief, given this occasion to the enemy; the devil (he said) having missed her
daughter’s soul, was now attempting to catch her own.
In addition to the popular excitement, Jerome had
provoked the dislike of many Roman nobles, whose female relatives had been
under his guidance. He had also made many enemies among the professed virgins
by censuring their inconsistencies in dress and manners, and was deeply engaged
in quarrels with the clergy, whom he taxed with ignorance, luxury, rapacity,
and selfishness, while they retorted by complaints of his intolerable
arrogance. Even his ardent admirer Marcella was unable to approve the scorn and
the asperity with which he treated his opponents; and the satirical letters
which he wrote against his brethren were eagerly circulated among the heathen
as tending to the disparagement of Christianity altogether.
By the death of his patron Damasus, which took
place in 384, within a month after that of Blaesilla,
he lost his official employment. He tells us that, in the earlier days of his
residence at Rome, he had been in the highest estimation, and had even been
regarded as worthy to succeed to the bishopric; but by this time the general
opinion had changed. He had made himself unpopular; he was accused of magic,
and of improper familiarity with Paula. “What?” he indignantly asks, “was I
ever charged with following after silken dresses, glittering jewels, painted
faces, or the desire of gold? Was there no other among the Roman matrons who
could subdue my mind but one who is always weeping and fasting, squalid in
filthy rags, almost blinded by her tears?—one who spends whole nights in
supplications to God for mercy; whose songs are the Psalms, whose speech is the
Gospel, whose pleasure is continence, whose life is a fast?”. That his own intractable
character had been in any degree to blame for the troubles which had arisen,
was an idea which Jerome could neither conceive nor entertain; in 385, after a
residence of somewhat less than three years, he left Rome in disgust for the
east.
Paula soon after followed, with Eustochium.
Jerome draws an elaborate picture of her kindred, her marriageable
daughter Rufina, and the young Toxotius,
accompanying her to the place of embarkation, and imploring that she would not
abandon them. Perhaps indignation may mingle with our other feelings as we read
his eulogies on the mistaken heroism which led her, in the fancied pursuit of a
higher religious life, to cast aside the duties which God and nature had laid
upon her.
Jerome and Paula met again at Antioch, and spent some
time in travelling, together or apart. Paula visited, with the greatest
devotion, all the holy sites; while Jerome employed himself
in endeavouring, by the help of local traditions, to bring the topography
of Palestine to bear on the illustration of Scripture. From the Holy Land they
passed into Egypt, where they sojourned among the Nitrian monks,
and Jerome attended the lectures of Didymus, the last eminent master of
the catechetical school of Alexandria, who, although blind from early childhood,
was among the foremost men of his age, not only for genius, but for theological
and secular learning. In 387 the matron and her spiritual guide took up their
abode at Bethlehem, then a place of great resort, both for pilgrims from all
parts of the Christian world, and for settlers who wished to enjoy such
advantages as the neighbourhood of scenes famous in sacred history might be
expected to yield for the religious life. Jerome describes in lofty terms the
love, the harmony, and the mutual forbearance which reigned among the
sojourners in the Redeemer's birthplace; but his praises were perhaps chiefly
founded on the improvement in his own position, as compared with that of his
latter days at Rome; and it is certain that if Bethlehem was at peace when he
arrived there, his temper soon introduced the elements of discord.
Paula became an object of interest to pilgrims, whose
veneration more than compensated for the secular advantages which she had
resigned. For a time Jerome lived in a small cell. He was supported by Paula,
but would accept only the coarsest clothing, with a diet of bread, water, and
pulse. By selling the remainder of his patrimony, through the agency of his
brother Paulinian, whom he sent into the west for the purpose, he was able
to build a monastery, in which it is supposed that he took up his abode, and an
hospital, which was open to all strangers except heretics, “lest”, he said,
“Joseph and Mary, if they were to come again to Bethlehem, should again find no
room; for our purpose is to wash the feet of those who come to us—not to
discuss their merits”. His chief literary occupation was the translation of the
Scriptures. While at Rome he had, at the desire of Damasus, corrected the
Latin version of the Gospels by the Greek; he now, in like manner, corrected
the Latin of the Old Testament according to the text of the Septuagint
exhibited in Origen’s Hexapla, which he procured from the library of
Caesarea; but he afterwards entered on a greater undertaking, of vast
importance for the ages which were to follow—a direct translation from the
Hebrew. These labours excited great odium against him on the part of
persons by whom the reverence which regards God’s word as sacred was
ignorantly extended to the defects of the versions which they had been
accustomed to use. His correction of the Gospels had contributed to swell his
unpopularity at Rome; to attempt any improvements on the Septuagint, which was
supposed to be itself inspired, was regarded as a daring impiety. Rufinus,
in the bitterness of controversy, denounced Jerome for bringing the knowledge
which he had bought from “a Barabbas of the synagogue” to disparage the books
which the apostles had delivered to the church; even Augustine wrote to
dissuade him from prosecuting his task, on the ground that, after
the labours of so many translators, there was probably nothing
considerable to be done.
By his correspondence Jerome acted as a spiritual
director to many religious persons at Rome and elsewhere, while at home he
superintended the exercises and employments of Paula and Eustochium. The
hours of the pious widow and her daughter were spent in study, devotion, and
works of charity : such was their eagerness to penetrate into the meaning of
Scripture, that Jerome often found himself perplexed by their pertinacious
questionings. Paula daily bewailed the vanities of her youth with a profusion
of tears; even in illness she refused to depart from her custom of lying on the
bare floor in a hair shirt; nor would she taste wine, although the advice of
her physician was supported by the spiritual authority of Jerome and of
Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in Cyprus. She built three monasteries for
women, and one for men. Her property had been greatly reduced by her largesses for religious and charitable purposes before
leaving Rome and in the course of her travels; she now gave away the remainder,
and, when Jerome remonstrated, she answered that it was her wish to die a
beggar, without leaving anything for her daughter, and to be indebted to the
charity of others for a shroud. Eustochium is celebrated as a model
of filial obedience; she never, it is said, slept away from her mother, never
ate except in her company, never took a step without her: she never had any
money of her own during her mother’s lifetime, and at Paula’s death found
herself charged with the maintenance of a multitude of male and female
recluses, and burdened with debts which the devout widow had contracted at high
interest, in order to obtain the means for her extravagant alms-deeds.
After a residence of nearly twenty years at Bethlehem,
Paula died in 404, and was buried in the church of the Nativity. The funeral
rites lasted a week. The bier was borne by bishops, while others of that order
carried lamps; and the attendance of clergy, monks, and laity was immense. The
inscription on the grave, composed by Jerome, set forth the illustrious descent
and connections of Paula, with her sacrifice of all for Christ.
Eustochium survived her until 419, and in the following year Jerome
himself died, having attained the age of eighty-nine.
The founders of monasticism intended that their
disciples should be patterns of the highest Christian life, rather than
directly teachers. They were therefore originally laymen, but by the repute of
sanctity they soon gained an influence which raised them into a rivalry with
the clergy. Although for the most part little qualified by education to judge
of theological questions, they were consulted on the highest and the most
difficult Some of them were resorted to as oracles; even the emperor
Theodosius, before resolving on war, thought it well to assure himself by the
opinion of John, a celebrated solitary of the Thebaid. By many of the
monks ecclesiastical office was regarded as inconsistent with the higher spiritual
life. Thus St. Martin of Tours considered that his power of miracles was
weakened from the time when he left his monastery for the
episcopate. Pachomius charged his brotherhood to shun ordination as a
snare and it is recorded as a saying current in Egypt, that “a monk ought to
avoid bishops and women; for neither will allow him to rest quietly in his
cell, or to devote himself to the contemplation of heavenly
things”. Ammonius, one of the monks who had accompanied Athanasius to
Rome, on being chosen for a bishopric, cut off one of his ears, supposing that,
as under the Jewish law, the mutilation would disqualify him; and, on being
told that such was not the case, he threatened to cut out his tongue. When,
however, an abbot named Dracontius declined
a bishopric as being a hindrance to spiritual improvement, Athanasius strongly
combated his opinion. “Even when a bishop”, he writes, “you may hunger and
thirst, and fast as often as Paul. . . . We know of bishops who fast, and of
monks who eat; of bishops who abstain from wine, and of monks who drink; of
bishops who do miracles, and of monks who do none; of many bishops who have
never married, and of monks who have had children”. But, although the original
idea of monachism discouraged the reception of ecclesiastical orders, many
monks regarded ordination as an advancement, and for that reason sought after
it. St. Augustine intimates that these were not always the persons who were
most likely to do credit to the clerical office; but even where there was no previous
objection on the ground of character, the effect of transferring monks to the
ranks of clergy was often unsatisfactory. St. Chrysostom, a warm advocate of
monasticism, mentions that he had known some who made continual progress as
monks, but deteriorated when brought into active life as ecclesiastics; and
perhaps this change may be explained by supposing that the monastic training
had failed to prepare them for functions which require a knowledge of men, and
a sympathy with human feelings.
There is much that is beautiful and attractive in the
idea of monasticism—a life dedicated to prayer and contemplation, varied
by labours for the good of mankind; a bond of brotherhood, linking
together as equals all who should enter into the society, from the man who had
forsaken rank and wealth and power—perhaps even sovereignty—to the emancipated
slave; renunciation of individual possessions for a community of all things, in
imitation (as was supposed) of the first Christians after the day of Pentecost.
But while we acknowledge this, and believe that in very many cases the benefits
of the monastic institution were largely realized—while we see in the
establishment of this system a providential preparation for the coming ages of
darkness, in which it was to be of inestimable service to the church, to
literature, and to civilization—we must notice even thus early some of the
evils which were mixed with it Foremost among these may be placed the danger of
the distinction between an ordinary and a more exalted Christian life. This
idea St. Chrysostom strongly and frequently opposed. “All men”, he says, “ought
to rise to the same height, and that which ruins the whole world is that we
imagine a greater strictness to be necessary for the monk alone, but that
others may lead careless lives. Indeed it is not so, it is not so; but we are
all required to exercise the same discipline; and this I very strongly
assert,—or rather, not I, but He who will be our judge.
The Saviour's precepts that we should take his yoke upon us, that we
should enter in at the strait gate, that we should hate the life of this world,
and all such like, are not addressed to monks only, but to all. But the
distinction was too commonly adopted—not only to the relaxation of religion and
morals among the multitude, who learnt to devolve the higher duties on the
monks, and were led into a general disregard of the divine laws by finding
themselves exempt from the operation of certain rules which claimed a divine
authority, such as the monastic precepts on the subject of marriage; but to the
danger of those who embraced a course which was thus marked out as far above
that required of mankind in general”.
The institution was not of Christian origin. It was
common to eastern religions; the scriptural patterns of it were all drawn from
the days of the Old Testament— Elijah, the Rechabites, St. John the Baptist
whereas a warrant for it under the gospel was only to be found by violently
distorting the meaning of some passages, or by magnifying them beyond their due
proportion. The monk was to avoid those trials of life for the bearing of which
grace is promised, and was to cast himself on other trials, for which he might
possibly be unfit. He was placed in hostility, not only to the corruption and
evil of the world, but to that which is good in it. He was to renounce its
charities and its discipline; he was to become a stranger to his natural
affections. Antony himself believed it to be a duty to overcome his love for
his sister, whom, after their early parting, he never saw again until she had
become an aged abbess; and we have seen how harshly Pachomius disowned the
ties of kindred. Pior, a disciple of Antony, on
leaving his father’s house, vowed that he would never again look on any of his
relations. After he had spent fifty years in the desert, his sister discovered
that he was still alive; she was too infirm to seek him out, but her earnest
entreaties set in motion the authority of his superiors, and Pior was ordered to visit her. Having arrived in front of
her dwelling, he sent her notice of his presence. As the door opened, he closed
his eyes, and held them obstinately closed throughout the meeting; and, having
allowed his sister to see him in this fashion, he refused to enter her house,
and hurried back to the desert. Another monastic hero, on receiving a large
packet of letters from his home, with which he had held no communication for
fifteen years, burnt it without opening it, lest the contents should distract
his mind by suggesting remembrances of the writers. A still more extraordinary
example of the manner in which the monks were expected to deaden their natural
feelings is said to have been given by one Mucius.
On his desiring admission into a monastery, with his son, a boy eight years
old, they were compelled, by way of trial, to remain long without the gate. The
constancy with which this was borne prevailed on the monks to admit them,
although children were usually excluded; but their probation was not yet ended.
They were separated from each other, the child was ill-treated in every way,
was dressed in rags, kept in a disgustingly filthy state, and often beaten
without any cause. Mucius, however, made no
remonstrance; and at length, on being told to throw his son into the river, he
obeyed this command also. The boy was saved, and it was revealed to the abbot
of the house that his new inmate was a second Abraham.
The overstrained and misdirected idea of obedience
which appears so remarkably in the case of Mucius,
runs through the whole history of early monachism. The applicants for
admission into a monastic society were required to approve themselves by
submitting to insults, contempt, harsh usage, and degrading employments; the
faith and patience of the monks were tried by the imposition of wearisome and preposterous
labours. Thus it is related that John, the same whose responses afterwards
directed the policy of the great Theodosius, was commanded by his abbot to
remove a huge rock, and struggled at the manifestly hopeless task until he was
worn out by the violence of his exertions. At another time he was ordered to
water a dry stick twice a day; and for a year he faithfully persisted in the
work, toiling, whether sick or well, through all the inclemencies of
the seasons, to fetch the water twice every day from a distance of two miles.
On being asked at length by his superior whether the plant had struck root, the
monk completed his obedience by modestly answering that he did not know;
whereupon the abbot, pulling up the stick, released him from his task. In such
narratives it seems to be expected that we should admire not only the endurance
of the submissive monk, but the execrable tyranny of the taskmaster.
The zeal with which St. Ambrose taught that virginity
ought to be embraced in defiance of the will of parents has already been
mentioned. St. Jerome is yet more extravagant. “Although”, he writes, in
exhorting Heliodorus to become a hermit, “your little nephew should
hang about your neck; although your mother, with hair dishevelled and
garments rent, should show you the breasts at which she nourished you; although
your father should lie on the threshold;—trample on your father, and set out!
Fly with dry eyes to the banner of the cross! The only kind of piety is to be
cruel in this matter”.
An over-valuation of celibacy already called down the
censure of some councils. That of Gangra anathematizes those who
condemn marriage as if it were inconsistent with salvation; it forbids virgins
to exalt themselves above the married, and orders that women should not forsake
their husbands as if matrimony were unholy. The whole tone of its canons
is directed against the error of making a higher religion the pretext for the
neglect of natural and ordinary duties. Other councils forbade the reception of
married persons into monasteries without the consent of their partners, and the
profession of celibacy by women before the age of mature understanding. The
council of Saragossa (A.D. 381) fixes this at forty; the third council of
Carthage (A.D. 397), at twenty-five; St. Basil, without naming any particular
age, requires that the profession shall be the effect of a settled and
independent resolution.
Some monks lived entirely for contemplation and
devotion, depending on others for food—as Paul, called the Simple, a monk
of Scetis, who said three hundred prayers a-day,
keeping an account of them by pebbles. But in general, the need of some
additional occupation was felt by the fathers of monasticism. It was a saying
that “a monk employed is beset by one devil, but an idle monk by a whole
legion”. The industrial occupations prescribed for the monks, however, were not
in general such as very thoroughly to occupy them. There was, after all, much
vacant time, and, although some of them cultivated learning, there was in most
cases a want of mental resources for the profitable use of leisure. Antony,
indeed, when a philosopher asked him how he could live without books, was able
to reply that for him the whole creation was a book, always at hand, in which
he could read God's word whensoever he pleased. But this capacity for
the contemplative life was not universal Among the multitude who embraced the
monastic profession—some from a mere spirit of imitation; others from
disappointment in love or in ambition, from excited feelings of remorse, or in
consequence of a sudden shock; some from a wish to distinguish themselves, and
to gain the reputation of holiness; some from a disinclination to earn their
support by any active callings The means which were taken to avoid temptation
rather served to excite it, by placing always before the mind the duty of
combating certain forms in which it might be expected to appear. Thoughts of
blasphemy and visions of impurity are continually mentioned in the histories of
monks. Many were driven into positive insanity by solitude and excessive
abstinence, working on enthusiastic temperaments; many to despair, with
thoughts of suicide, which were sometimes carried into act. The biographies are
full of fights with devils, of visions and miracles—especially cures of
demoniacs, raising of the dead and compelling them to speak. The brute
creatures play a large part in the miraculous tales. Thus it is said that the
younger Macarius was visited by a lioness, who laid her blind cubs at
his feet, that they might receive their sight. The saint, after praying,
performed the work; and the mother expressed her gratitude by a present of
sheepskins. It would be difficult to determine in how far these stories are
true; how far the phantasies of excited imagination may have been mistaken for
realities; how far ordinary things have been exaggerated into the miraculous;
or how far the narratives are mere falsehoods, invented for the glory of the
heroes and of the institution.
With many the outward imitation of the founders
of monachism was all in all, while unhappily the spirit which
preserved such men as Antony from the evils of their system was wanting.
Austerities' frightful to think of were too often combined with a want of true
Christian faith and purity of heart. Many monks fancied themselves above
needing the ordinances of grace; many relapsed from an overstrained asceticism
into self-indulgent habits. Spiritual pride and fanaticism abounded. And often
it was found that the love of earthly things, which was supposed to have been
overcome by embracing the monastic state, revived in new and subtle forms; as
we are told that many who had renounced wealth and splendour became
chary of a knife, a style, a needle, or a pen; that they would not let any
one even touch their books, and for such trifles were ready to break out
into violent anger.
After a time, monks, forgetting the original object of
their institution, began to flock into towns, for the sake of the gifts which
were to be expected, and of the other advantages which such places offered.
This was forbidden in 390 by a law of Theodosius, issued, it is said, at the
instigation of judges, who found the visitors apt to interfere with the course
of justice. Two years later the law was relaxed, but only to the extent of
allowing the monks to repair to, cities for the redress of judicial wrongs. The
credulity and liberality of the inhabitants were practised on by
hypocritical monks, who affected strange dress and savage manners,—loading
themselves with heavy chains, exhibiting pretended relics, and telling
outrageous fictions of adventures which they professed to have had with evil
spirits,—while their private life was spent in luxury and profligacy.
Few of the monks were able even to read; and in them
the ignorance which would have been despised in the clergy was admired as a
token of sanctity. In consequence of their ignorance they were liable to be
swayed by any one who might get possession of their minds. Their
partisanship was violent; they denounced any deviation from their own narrow
views as utterly anti-Christian; and, although in the Arian
and Apollinarian controversies they did good service, it was often in a
rude and improper manner. They interfered tumultuously in the elections of
bishops. Crowds of them went about in the east, destroying temples; and as such
were the specimens of the monastic class which came into contact with the
pagans, we cannot wonder that their illiteracy and their lawless fury excited
in these strong feelings of disgust and detestation. Libanius, whose
description of them has been already quoted in part, is vehement against these
“drones” who live in luxury at other men’s cost; and he charges them with
getting a large portion of the soil into their possession under false pretences of
religion. The emperor Julian can find nothing worse to say against the
pretenders to the character of cynics than that they are like the class of
“renunciants” among the “Galileans”, who, by giving up such trifles as they
possess, acquire wealth, state, and reverence. In like manner Eunapius
speaks of the monks as leading a “swinish life”; he says that any
one who chooses to dress in black and to disregard public decency may
acquire a tyrannic power. If a comparison with the circumcellions, which St. Augustine is very eager to
rebut, was undeserved by the monks of northern Africa, it would have done but
little injustice to those of some other regions.
The monastic spirit soon began to exhibit itself in
extravagant forms. Thus the doscoi, or
grazers, whose manner of life originated in Mesopotamia, but was afterwards
imitated in Palestine, dwelt in mountains or deserts, without any roof to
shelter them—exposed, almost entirely naked, to the heat and to the cold, and
browsing on grass and herbs until, both in body and in mind, they lost the
likeness of humanity. Others of these Christian fakirs, after having
professedly attained a perfection superior to all human feelings, used to feign
madness, and to astonish the inhabitants of cities by ostentatious displays of
ridiculous and unseemly behaviour, in order (as it was interpreted) to
show their contempt for worldly glory. And in the beginning of the fifth
century appeared the fanaticism of the stylites, or pillar-saints.
The first of these, Simeon, a native of the
border-land between Syria and Cilicia, was employed in boyhood to tend his
father's sheep; but, having been induced by some words which he heard in church
to resolve on embracing a religious life, he entered a strict monastery at the
age of thirteen, and remained there nine years. His abstinences and other
mortifications excited the wonder and admiration of the monks. One day, on
being sent to draw water, he took the rough palm-rope of the convent well,
bound it tightly round him, and pretended that he had been unable to find it.
At the end of a fortnight, the secret was betrayed by the drops of blood which
the rope forced out from his flesh; and, on examination, it was found to have
eaten into his body so deeply that it could hardly be seen. Simeon bore
without a groan the torture of having it extracted, but would not allow any
remedies to be applied to his wounds; and the abbot thereupon begged that he
would leave the monastery, lest his severities should raise a spirit of
emulation which might be dangerous to the weaker
brethren. Simeon then withdrew to a place about forty miles from
Antioch, where he lived ten years in a sort of narrow pen; after which he built
a pillar, and took his position on the top of it, which was only about a yard
in diameter. He removed successively from one pillar to another, always
increasing the height, which in the last of them was forty cubits; and in this
way he spent thirty-seven years. His life is compared to that of
angels—offering up prayers for men from his elevated station, and bringing down
graces on them. His neck was loaded with an iron chain. In praying, he bent his
body so that his forehead almost touched his feet; a spectator once counted
twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions of this movement, and then lost his
reckoning. The stylite took only one scanty meal a-week, and fasted
throughout the season of Lent. He uttered prophecies, and wrought an abundance
of miracles.
Some time after he had adopted his peculiar
manner of life, a neighbouring society of monks sent to ask why he
was not content with such fashions of holiness as had sufficed for the saints
of earlier days. The messenger was charged to bid him leave his pillar, and, in
case of a refusal, to pull him down by force. But Simeon, on hearing the
order, put forth one of his feet, as if to descend; whereupon the messenger, as
he had been instructed, acknowledged this obedience as a proof that
the stylite’s mode of life was approved by God, and desired him to
continue in it.
Simeon’s fame became immense. Pilgrims from
distant lands—from Persia and Ethiopia, from Spain, Gaul, and even from
Britain—flocked to see him; and during his own lifetime little figures of him
were set up in the workshops of Rome, as charms against evil. The king of
Persia sent ambassadors to him; he corresponded with bishops and emperors, and
influenced the policy both of church and state, while, by his life and his
exhortations, he converted multitudes of Saracens and other nomads of the
desert.
At length the devil appeared to Simeon in
the form of an angel, and in the name of God invited him to ascend, like
Elijah, in a fiery chariot, to the company of angels and saints who were
represented as eager to welcome him. Simeon raised his right foot to
enter the chariot, but at the same time made the sign of the cross, on which
the tempter vanished. In punishment of the stylite’s having so far
given way to presumption, the devil afflicted him with an ulcer in his thigh;
and Simeon, by way of penance, resolved that the foot which he had put
forth should never again touch his pillar, but during the remaining year of his
life supported himself on one leg. Simeon died in 460, at the age of
seventy-two; and we are told that around the spot which had long been his
abode, all nature mourned his departure. The birds wheeled about his pillar,
uttering doleful cries; men and beasts filled the air with their groans to a
distance of many miles; while the mountains, the forests, and the plains were
enveloped in a dense and sympathetic gloom. An angel with a countenance like
lightning, and in raiment white as snow, appeared discoursing with seven
elders, in awful tones, of which the words could not be distinguished; and as
the precious body was carried to Antioch, to serve the city as a defence,
instead of the walls which had been lately overthrown by an earthquake, a
multitude of miracles marked its way.
On Simeon’s death, a disciple
named Sergius, in obedience to his desire, carried his cowl to the emperor
Leo; but, as the emperor did not appear to be sufficiently impressed by the
announcement of the legacy, Sergius bestowed it on Daniel, a monk of
Mesopotamian birth, whose sanctity had already been attested by many
miracles. Daniel had formerly visited Simeon; he was now urged by visions
to imitate his manner of life, and set up a pillar in a spot which had been
indicated by a dove, about four miles north of Constantinople. The owner of the
soil, whose leave had not been asked, complained of this invasion to Leo and to
the patriarch Gennadius; and Gennadius, envious of Daniel’s holiness,
or suspecting him of vanity, was about to dislodge him, when miracles were
wrought in vindication of the stylite’s motives. Daniel was therefore
allowed to retain his position, and after some time Gennadius, whose
suspicions were not yet extinct, was directed by a vision to ordain him to the
priesthood. The stylite professed himself unworthy, and would not allow
the patriarch to approach him; but Gennadius, standing at the foot of the
pillar, went through the form of ordination. Daniel then ordered that a ladder
should be brought; the patriarch mounted to the top of the column, administered
the Eucharist to the newly-ordained priest, and received it at his
hands.
For thirty-three years Daniel continued to occupy his
pillar, until he died at the age of eighty. By continually standing, his feet
were covered with sores and ulcers; and it was in vain that his
disciples endeavoured to discover by what nourishment he supported
life. The high winds of Thrace sometimes stripped him of his scanty clothing,
and almost blew him from his place, and sometimes he was covered for days with
snow and ice, until Leo forcibly enclosed the top of his pillar with a shed.
Like Simeon, he was supposed to possess the gifts of prophecy and
miracles; he was regarded as an oracle of heaven, and was visited with
reverence by kings and emperors. It is said that, through all the temptations
to pride which he so laboriously courted, Daniel was able to preserve his
humility; and, although general assertions of this kind carry little weight,
perhaps a better evidence may be found in the statement that he discouraged all
who approached him with complaints against their bishops.
Although the stylite manner of life was
regarded by some teachers as vainglorious and
unprofitable, Simeon found many imitators in Syria and in Greece,
where stylites are mentioned as late as the twelfth century. But, except
in a very few cases, this fashion does not appear to have been adopted in other
countries. When one Wulfilaich, towards the end
of the sixth century, attempted to practise it in the district of
Treves, the neighbouring bishops ordered his pillar to be demolished.
Rites and Usages.
The more general adoption of Christianity was followed
by an increase of splendour in all that concerned the worship of God.
Churches were built and adorned with greater cost; the officiating clergy were
attired in gorgeous vestures; the music became more elaborate, and many new
ceremonies were introduced. But, praiseworthy as was the design of making the
outward service as worthy of its object as the means of the worshippers would
allow, the change was not unaccompanied by serious evils, which even already
began to produce their effects. St. Jerome complains of the magnificence which
was lavished on churches—their marble walls and pillars, their gilded ceilings,
their jewelled altars—which he contrasts with the neglect of all care
in the choice of fit persons for the ministry; and he scornfully reprobates the
arguments which would defend the richness of furniture and decoration in
Christian churches by analogies derived from the Jewish system. Multitudes were
drawn into the church by the conversion of the emperor, without any sufficient
understanding of their new profession—with minds still possessed by heathen
notions and corrupted by the general depravation of heathen morality. The
governors of the church attempted to recommend the gospel to such converts by
ceremonies which might rival those of their old religion, and so, it was hoped,
might attract them to the true and saving essentials with which the Christian
ceremonies were connected. But unhappily Christianity itself lost in the
process—not only being discredited by unworthy professors, but becoming
affected in its doctrines and practices by heathenism. Pagan usages were
adopted,—the burning of lamps or candles by day (which, even so lately as the
time of Lactantius, had been a subject of ridicule for the Christian
controversialists), incense, lustrations, and the like; and there was indeed
too much foundation for the reproach with which the Manichean Faustus assailed
the church:— “The sacrifices of the heathen ye have turned into feasts of
charity; their idols into martyrs, whom ye honour with the like
religious offices unto theirs; the ghosts of the dead ye appease with wine
and delicates; the festival days of the nations ye celebrate
together with them [as the kalends and the solstices]; and of their kind
of life ye have verily changed nothing”. A merely external performance of
duties, as it was all that heathenism required, came to be regarded by many as
sufficient in Christianity also, and bounty to the church was supposed to cover
the guilt of sins. St. Augustine says that an ordinary Christian who professed
any seriousness in spiritual things had as much to bear from the mockery of his
brethren as a convert to Christianity endured from the mockery of the heathen.
And we have already had occasion to notice the unfavourable effect
which the monastic system produced on the religion of men engaged in secular
life.
Many persons were found at church for the great
Christian ceremonies, and at the theatres, or even at the temples, for the
heathen spectacles. The ritual of the church was viewed as a theatrical
exhibition. The sermons were listened to as the displays of rhetoricians; and
eloquent preachers were cheered with clapping of hands, stamping of feet,
waving of handkerchiefs, cries of “Orthodox!” “Thirteenth apostle!” and other
like demonstrations, which such teachers as Chrysostom and Augustine often
tried to restrain, in order that they might persuade their flocks to a more
profitable manner of hearing. Some went to church for the sermon only, alleging
that they could pray at home. And when the more attractive parts of the
service were over, the great mass of the people departed, without remaining for
the administration of the Eucharist, which in the first ages had usually
been received by the whole congregation, but was now (in the Greek church, at
least) received by most persons at Easter only The doctrinal controversies
also, which occupy so large a space in the history of the century, acted
unfavourably on its religious tone, by bringing the highest mysteries of
the faith into idle discussion, and by throwing into the background the
necessity of a practically religious life.
Usages which had grown up insensibly were now fixed by
express regulations; and by this and the other means which have been mentioned,
the ritual system was so overlaid with rules and ceremonies as to give occasion
tor St. Augustine's well-known complaint, “that they were grown to such a
number that the state of Christian people was in worse case concerning that
matter than were the Jews”. Things which would have been good either as
expressions of devotion or as means of training for it, became, through their
multiplication and through the importance which was attached to them, too
likely to be regarded as independent ends.
The heathen temples were in some cases turned into
churches; but, intended as they were for a ritual which was chiefly carried on
in the open courts, and of which addresses to the people formed no part, their
structure was ill suited for Christian worship. The type of the Christian
churches was taken from buildings of another kind,—the basilicae;
and the name itself was adopted into ecclesiastical use, as signifying the
dwelling-places of the Almighty King. These buildings were oblong, and were
usually separated by two ranges of pillars into a middle part or nave, and two
aisles of inferior height. At the farther end was a portion styled in Greek
bema, and in Latin tribuna, distinguished from
the rest by the elevation of its floor, and terminating in a semicircular
projection, called the absis or
apse. The lower portion of the building was used as a sort of exchange; in the
bema stood the tribunal of the judge, with an altar before it. These
arrangements were easily accommodated to the purpose of worship, whether in
basilicas which were given up to the church, or in new buildings erected on the
same plan.
At Constantinople, from the foundation of the city, a
new form of ecclesiastical architecture was employed—its chief characteristics
being the cruciform plan, and the cupola which soared upwards from the
intersection of the cross, as if in imitation of the canopy of heaven. This
style in later times not only prevailed through the Greek church, including the
countries of the Slavonic race, but was introduced by Justinian at Ravenna, and
through the influence of the Ravennese examples
affected other parts of western Europe.
Contrary to the practice which afterwards became
general among the Teutonic nations, the early churches usually fronted the
east. Paulinus of Nola mentions this arrangement, and tells us that
he himself, in building his church to the honour of St. Felix,
deviated from it by turning the front towards the patron’s tomb.
The part of a church nearest to the entrance was the
narthex, or vestibule, occupied by penitents and catechumens, and open to all
comers. This was separated by the “beautiful gates” from the nave, in which the
“faithful” were placed; at the upper end of the nave, in a place corresponding
to that which in the secular basilicas was appropriated to the bar, was the
choir, slightly raised above the level of the nave, and separated by a railing
from the innermost portion of the church, the bema, or sanctuary. From the time
of Constantine the wooden altars of the primitive church began to be superseded
by stone. The introduction of this material is ascribed to Sylvester of Rome,
although without any certain authority, and the change appears to have been
completely established before the times of Gregory Nyssen and Chrysostom.
Women were seated apart from the men—sometimes in enclosed galleries, an
arrangement which was especially followed in eastern countries. The church was
usually surrounded by a court, containing the lodgings of the clergy and other
buildings, among which, in cathedrals and other greater churches, was the
baptistery. Churches were now dedicated with great solemnity, and the
anniversary of the consecration was celebrated.
The arts of painting and sculpture began to be taken
into the service of the gospel. This change, however, did not originate with
the clergy. Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early part of the century, expressed
himself strongly against the attempt to represent the holy personages of
Scripture—saying that the glory of the Saviour cannot be represented,
and that the true image of the saints is a saintly life. Epiphanius, bishop of
Constantia in Cyprus (whose name will again come before us), while travelling
in the Holy Land in 394, tore a curtain, which he found hanging before the
sanctuary of a church, with a figure either of the Saviour or of a
saint painted on it—declaring such representations to be contrary to Scripture.
But the account of the incident shows that new views as to their lawfulness had
already obtained a footing among Christians. It was usual to depict subjects
from the Old Testament as figurative of their evangelical antitypes: thus the
water from the rock was employed to signify baptism; Moses bringing the manna
from heaven represented the Eucharist; and the sacrifice of Isaac typified
the crucifixion. In addition to these symbolical pictures, the walls of many
churches were covered with martyrdoms and scriptural scenes, and wealthy
persons had their garments embroidered with subjects of the same kinds. It was
not, however, until the very end of the century that single figures were thus
painted—a sort of pictures the most likely to attract
the honour which was soon bestowed on them. St. Augustine reluctantly
confesses that in his time many were “adorers of pictures”. Statues were not
yet erected; nor was the Saviour himself represented, otherwise than
in symbolical forms, until the next century; although the teachers of the
church, abandoning the earlier view as to the uncomeliness of his
personal appearance, took up one of an opposite kind, and thus prepared the way
for the introduction of that type on which the artists of later ages have
expressed their ideal of serene majesty and tenderness.
The cross was adorned with gems and gold, and was
perhaps set upon the altars of churches. Julian charged the Christians with
worshipping it. But the crucifix, like all other representations of our Lord
which are associated with sorrow and suffering, was not known until some
centuries later.
BAPTISM.
During the fourth century much was done to fix those
parts of the liturgy which until then had been fluctuating. The name of St.
Basil in the east, and that of St. Ambrose in the west, are especially
celebrated in relation to this work, although both have been connected with
much that is of later date. The hymns of Ambrose became the models for such
compositions in the western church, and, from the general designation of the
style as Ambrosian, it came to pass that many pieces were wrongly ascribed
to him, as if they had been the productions of his own pen.
The division of the service into the “mass of the
catechumens” and the “mass of the faithful” was maintained, until, in the fifth
century, its abolition naturally followed on the general profession of
Christianity and the general practice of infant baptism. Now that the
celebration of Christian worship was not attended with danger, the earlier
portion of the service—including psalmody, reading of Scripture, prayers, and
sermon—was open to Jews and heathens, as well as to catechumens and penitents.
At baptism some new ceremonies were introduced—as the
use of lights and salt, and an unction with oil before baptism (significant of
the receivers being “made kings and priests unto God”, in addition to that with
chrism, which continued to be administered after the sacrament). The previous
training was methodized by a division of the catechumens into three classes,
hearers, kneelers, and competents, the last
being candidates who were fully prepared. The vigils of Easter and Pentecost
were, as before, the most usual times for baptism. In the east, the Epiphany
became popular as a baptismal season, connected as it was with
the Saviour’s baptism in the Jordan, and the administration at
Whitsuntide was disused. The custom of baptizing on the Epiphany also made its
way into Africa and other western countries; but when some Spanish bishops
baptized at Christmas, Epiphany, and on the festivals of saints, Siricius, in his decretal epistle to Himerius (A.D. 385), noted it as a presumption, and
ordered that baptism should not ordinarily be given except at Easter and
Whitsuntide.
The practice of deferring baptism has been exemplified
in many instances in the preceding chapters. The delay, however, did not arise
from any opinion that the baptism of infants was unlawful (for in case of
danger they were baptized, and the institution was regarded
as apostolical), but from fear lest a greater guilt should be contracted
by falling into sin after baptism. And the time to which the sacrament was
postponed was not, as with modern sectaries, that of attaining to years of
discretion; but the season of serious illness or other danger, or, in the case
of clergymen and monks, that of entering on a new and strict manner of life.
Eminent teachers of the church, a Gregory of Nazianzum and
his namesake of Nyssa, endeavoured to counteract the custom by
exposing the mistakes on which it rested. Gregory of Nyssa states that, when
alarmed by earthquakes, pestilence, or other public calamities, such multitudes
rushed to be baptized, that the clergy were oppressed by
the labour of receiving them.
The customs of churches varied as to the frequency of
celebrating the Eucharist. Where there was no daily consecration, it was usual
to reserve the consecrated bread, which thus became liable to be used for superstitious
purposes; as we are told that Satyrus, a brother
of St. Ambrose, was saved in a shipwreck by tying a morsel of the holy bread to
his neck; and that in another case the application of such bread, by way of a
poultice, opened the eyes of a blind person. When the elements were
consecrated, the people partook of both; to refuse the wine was noted as a
token of Manichaean heresy.
The name of agape was now used in a sense different
from that which it had originally borne—to designate festivals held by churches
at the tombs of their martyrs, or by families at those of their relatives.
These festivals took the place of the heathen Parentalia,
and were celebrated with so much of unseemliness and excess that bishops and
councils, during the latter part of the century, exerted themselves to suppress
them. But so great a hold had such celebrations on the multitude, that the
abolition of them was no easy matter, and could hardly be attempted without
danger. Thus the third council of Carthage, in 397, does not venture to forbid
them, except as far as possible and notices of them are found as having
continued in some places until the following century.
The Lord’s day was observed with greater strictness
than before, although the distinction between it and the Sabbath, as to origin,
authority, and manner of observance, was still carefully maintained.
Constantine, as we have seen, ordered that no legal proceedings and no military
exercises should take place on it; yet he allowed
agricultural labour to be carried on, lest the benefit
of favourable weather should be lost. The council of Laodicea, while
it condemned all Judaizing in the observance of the day, directed
that labour should be avoided on it as much as possible. Theodosius
in 379, and again in 386, enacted that no civil business should then be done,
and abolished the spectacles in which the heathen had found their consolation
when the day was set apart from other secular uses by Constantine.
The custom of observing the Sabbath in a similar
manner to the Lord's day was now declining. The Laodicean canon,
which has just been quoted, denounced a cessation from work on it
as Judaical.
The quartodeciman practice
as to the observance of Easter was condemned by the council of Nicaea, and was
thenceforth regarded as a mark of heterodoxy. But as the council did not direct
by what means the proper day should be determined, it was found that, although
Easter was everywhere kept on a Sunday, the reckonings of different churches
varied, sometimes to the extent of a month or more. The science of Alexandria
gave the law to the eastern churches in general; and in the sixth century the
Alexandrian calculation was adopted at Rome.
The tendency of the age to an increase
of ceremonies affected the celebration of Easter. The week before the festival
was observed with additional solemnity. On the Thursday
the Eucharist was celebrated in the evening, in special remembrance
of its original institution; on Easter-eve, ‘the great Sabbath’, cities were
illuminated, and crowds of worshippers, carrying lights, symbolical of the
baptismal “enlightening”, flocked to the churches, where they continued in
vigil until the morning of the resurrection. The following week was a season of
rejoicing; the newly-baptized wore their white robes until the Sunday of the
octave.
The Epiphany now made its way from the eastern
churches into the west, where it was kept chiefly in remembrance of our Lord's
manifestation to the magi, but also with a reference to his first miracle and
other manifestations. As the Donatists rejected the festival, we may
infer that it must have been unknown in Africa until after the date of their
separation from the church; the earliest express notice of its celebration in
any western country is in 360, when Julian kept it at Vienne, shortly before
avowing his apostasy. In like manner the observance of the Nativity passed from
the west to the east. It was introduced at Antioch soon after 375, and was
there kept on the 25th of December, although some churches combined it with the
Epiphany. The idea that our Christmas-day was chosen from a wish to compensate
for the heathen festivals of the season is refuted by the fact that the policy
of the earlier Christians, from whom it had come down, met the festivities of
the heathen by appointing not feasts, but fasts. Thus, in the west, a fast of
three days at the beginning of the year was established in opposition to the
Saturnalia.
The festivals of some of the most distinguished
saints, such as St. Peter and St. Paul, St. John the Baptist and St. Stephen,
from having had only a local celebration, became, in the fourth century,
general throughout the church.
The practice of fasting, which had formerly been left
in great measure to the discretion of individuals, was now settled by ecclesiastical
laws. The Lenten fast, of thirty-six days, "a tithe of the year",
became general both in the east and in the west, although with a difference as
to its beginning, from the circumstance that in the east the Sabbath, as well
as the Lord's day, was excepted from the time of fasting.
Acts of mercy were connected with certain holy days
and seasons. Thus Constantine ordered that the emancipation of slaves should
take place on Sundays. While he forbade legal proceedings in general on Sunday,
he excepted the ceremony of emancipation, and such other acts of grace as were
suitable to the character of the day. Easter became the chief season for
emancipation. Theodosius in 380 forbade the carrying on of criminal law-
proceedings during Lent Nine years later he issued a like prohibition of all
bodily punishments during the same season; and in 387 he renewed the laws of
the elder and younger Valentinians, by which it was ordered that all
prisoners, except those guilty of the very worst offences, should be released
at Easter.
PENANCE.
During the course of the century many canons were made
on the subject of penance, which was thus carried into great minuteness of
detail. In the east the regulation of penance was ordinarily left to the
consciences of individuals; especially after Nectarius, in consequence of a
scandal which had occurred, abolished the office of penitentiary presbyter at
Constantinople in 391. Socrates, who wrote about the year 439, expresses an
apprehension of evil results from the abolition, and Sozomen,
somewhat later, states that a deterioration of morals had ensued. The
office of penitentiary does not appear to have existed in the west and there
the performance of formal penance came to be regarded as necessary in order to
the Divine forgiveness. The ancient division of penitents into classes is not
mentioned after the fifth century.
The honours paid to martyrs were naturally
increased, as, from the cessation of persecution, the opportunities of
martyrdom became very rare. And the influence of heathenism told most unhappily
in this matter. Converts regarded the martyrs as holding a place in their new
religion like that of the heroes in the pagan system; they ascribed to them a
tutelary power, and paid them honours such as those which belonged to
the lesser personages of the pagan mythology. Nor was the Arian controversy
without its effect in directing men’s minds unduly towards the saints and
martyrs. For, as the great object of orthodox controversialists, in the fourth
century, was to vindicate the Saviour’s divinity, and thus his
manhood was comparatively little spoken of, he was now in thought removed
further from mankind; a want of less exalted intercessors was felt, and a
reverence for nearer objects grew up. From the middle of the century it became
usual to deliver panegyrical orations on the days assigned to the
commemoration of martyrs. The preachers, feeling themselves bound to make the
most of their subjects on such occasions, ran out into glorifications of the
martyrs, which, if at first intended only as rhetorical ornaments, were soon
converted into matter of doctrine. In addition to the earlier belief that the
martyrs interceded for their brethren, it was now supposed that they
were cognisant of wishes addressed to them. The popular heathen
opinion, that the spirits of the dead continued to hover about the
resting-places of their bodies, was combined with the idea that the souls of
the martyrs were already in the presence of God. Hence arose a practice of
invoking them at their graves, and requesting their intercession for all manner
of temporal as well as spiritual benefits; and by degrees such addresses came
to be put up irrespectively of place. Poetry too contributed to advance the
movement; the invocations which heathens had addressed to their gods and muses were
transferred by Christian poets to the saints. Other holy persons— as the
worthies of Scripture and distinguished monks—were soon associated with the
martyrs in the general veneration. Yet the prayers which had in earlier times
been offered up for saints and martyrs, in common with the rest of the faithful
departed, were retained, notwithstanding their growing inconsistency with the
prevalent belief, until in the beginning of the fifth century they were
abandoned as derogatory to the objects of them. Saints were, like the heathen
gods, chosen as special patrons, not only by individuals, but by cities. It was
not without plausible grounds that heathens, as Julian and Eunapius, began
to retort on Christians the charge of worshipping dead men, and that the Manicheans,
as we have seen, joined in the reproach. St. Augustine strenuously repelled it;
he exhorted to an imitation of saints in their holiness, and endeavoured,
as did also St. Chrysostom, to oppose the tendency towards an undue exaltation
of them. But before his time practices nearly akin to worship of the saints had
too surely made their way into the popular belief and feeling, as indeed
Augustine is himself obliged to confess.
The bodies of martyrs began to be treated with
special honour. Altars and chapels were built over their graves; their
relics were transferred from the original places of burial, were broken up into
fragments, of which each was supposed to possess a supernatural virtue, and
were deposited under the altars of churches. There is no mention of such
translations in the account of the churches built by Constantine; but in the
reign of Constantius some bodies, supposed to be those of apostles,
were found, and were solemnly removed to Constantinople. We are told that remains
of other Scripture saints, as far back as the prophet Samuel, and even the
patriarch Joseph, were afterwards discovered; and, in order to prevent the risk
of mistake as to bodies which had been lying in the earth for hundreds or
thousands of years, the saints themselves were said to have appeared in
visions, and to have revealed the places of their interment. There was a
readiness to believe that every grave of an unknown person- was that of a
martyr. St. Martin, it is said, by praying over a grave which had been thus
honoured, called up a shade of ferocious appearance, and forced the supposed
martyr to avow that he had been a robber, and had been executed for his crimes.
It has been already related that St. Antony
disapproved of the Egyptian manner of showing reverence for saints by keeping
their bodies above ground, and took measures for escaping such honours.
St. Hilarion, the founder of monasticism in Palestine, having died in
Cyprus, one of his disciples, Hesychius (who was himself afterwards
canonized) stole his body from the grave, and carried it off to the Holy Land.
A rivalry ensued between the places of the two interments,—the Cypriots
maintaining that, if the saint's body were in Palestine, his spirit remained
with themselves; and miracles were said to be performed at both. In another
case, the possession of the remains of some monks who had been slain by the
Saracens was disputed with bloodshed by the inhabitants of
two neighbouring towns.
Relics were supposed to work miracles; they were worn
as amulets, and the churches in which they were preserved were hung (although
perhaps not before the next century) with models of limbs which had been
restored to strength through their virtue. Pretended relics were imposed on the
credulous, and various abuses arose. For the purpose of restraining these,
Theodosius enacted, m 386, that no one should buy or sell the bodies of
martyrs, or should translate them from one place to another.
The blessed Virgin Mary was not as
yet honoured above other saints. The Collyridians,
a party of female devotees who passed from Thrace into Arabia in the last years
of the century, are noted as heretics for offering cakes to her with rites
which were perhaps derived from the heathen worship of Ceres. But with the
growing admiration of the virgin life, of which St. Mary was regarded as the
type, there was a progress of feeling towards opinions which became more
decided during the controversies of the following century. On the other hand,
the perpetual virginity of the Saviour’s mother was denied by
the anomoean Eunomius, by some of
the Apollinarians, by Helvidius, a Roman
lawyer (A.D. 383), and Bonosus, bishop
of Sardica (A.D. 392); and a sect of Antidico-marianites (adversaries
of Mary), called forth by the extravagances of the Collyridians,
is mentioned as having existed in Arabia.
Anything like worship of angels was as yet supposed to
be expressly forbidden by Scripture. St. Ambrose is the only father of this age
who recommends invocation of guardian angels.
From the time of the empress Helena’s visit to the
Holy Land, a great impulse was given to the practice of pilgrimage. It was
supposed, not only that the view of scenes hallowed by their association with
the events of Scripture would enkindle or heighten devotion, but that prayers
would be especially acceptable if offered up in particular spots; and, as had
been the case under the heathen system, some places were believed to be
distinguished by frequent miracles. From all quarters—even from the distant
Britain—pilgrims flocked to the sacred sites of Palestine, and on their return
they carried home with them water from the Jordan, earth from the
Redeemer’s sepulchre, or chips of the true cross, which was speedily found
to possess the power of reproducing itself. Many, it is said, were even led by
their uncritical devotion to visit Arabia for the purpose of beholding the
dunghill on which the patriarch Job endured his trials. Pilgrimage became a
fashion, and soon exhibited the evil . characteristics of a fashion, so that
already warnings were uttered against the errors and abuses which were
connected with it. The monk St. Hilarion, during his residence of fifty
years in Palestine, visited the holy sites but once, and for a single day—in
order, as he said, that he might neither appear to despise them on account of
their nearness, nor to suppose that God’s grace was limited to any particular
place. St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote a treatise for the express purpose of
dissuading from pilgrimage. Among our Lord’s beatitudes, he says, there is none
for those who shall visit Jerusalem. For women the pilgrimage must be at the
least, distracting, since they cannot perform it without male companions; and
there is continual danger from the promiscuous society of the hostelries on the
way. The Saviour is no longer bodily in the holy places; He and the Holy
Spirit are not confined to Jerusalem. Change of place will not bring God nearer
to us : wherever we are, He will come to us, if our hearts be a fit abode for
Him to dwell in and walk in : but if the inner man be full of evil thoughts,
although we were at Golgotha, on the Mount of Olives, or at the memorial of the
Resurrection, we are as far from receiving Christ within us as they who have
not even begun to feel Him. For himself, Gregory says that he had made the
pilgrimage, not out of curiosity, but on his way to a council in Arabia, and
had escaped the usual dangers by travelling in an imperial carriage, and in the
company of religious brethren: yet the sight of the localities had added
nothing to his belief of the nativity, the resurrection, of the ascension;
while the desperate wickedness of the inhabitants had proved to him that there
could be no special grace in the places, and had taught him to value more
highly than before the religion of his own Cappadocia. Monks (he says) ought
to endeavour to go on pilgrimage from the body to the Lord, rather
than from Cappadocia to Palestine. Even Jerome—although he had fixed his abode
in the Holy Land, and although in some of his writings he expatiates on the influence
of its hallowed associations—yet elsewhere very earnestly warns against the
delusions by which the multitude of pilgrims was led thither. “It is not matter
of praise”, he tells Paulinus, “to have been at Jerusalem, but to have lived
religiously at Jerusalem”. The scenes of the crucifixion and of the
resurrection are profitable to such as bear their own cross and daily rise
again with Christ—to those who show themselves worthy of so eminent a
dwelling-place. But as for those who say ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of
the Lord’—let them hear the apostle’s words—‘Ye are the temple of the Lord, and
the Holy Spirit dwelleth in you’. The court of heaven is open to
access from Jerusalem and from Britain alike; for the kingdom of God is within
you”
Opposition to the Tendencies of the Age.
The novel ideas and practices which were introduced
into the church excited the mockery of the older sects —such as the Novatianists and the Manichaeans—who loudly
charged the Catholics with paganism. The teachers of the age could
not fail to discern and to reprobate some of the growing corruptions, and
attempted to counteract them. But they bore with, and even encouraged, much
that eventually proved mischievous—partly from a desire to facilitate the
progress of the gospel and to deal tenderly with converts partly from a regard
to the pious intention which lay under strange and injudicious manifestations,
or from a want of that historical experience which would have enabled them to
detect the lurking germs of evil. On the other hand, there were persons who
decidedly set themselves against the tendencies of the time; but unhappily with
such a mixture of error in their own opinions, and sometimes with such
indiscretion in their conduct, as excited a general odium, and served to
strengthen the cause which they opposed. Two of these, Helvidius and Bonosus, have lately been mentioned; the former was
encountered by St. Jerome, the latter by St. Ambrose.
Aerius, a presbyter of Sebaste,
in the Lesser Armenia, was of earlier date—about A.D. 360. He is described by
Epiphanius as an Arian; but his notoriety arose from his attacks on the
discipline and observances of the church. In consequence, it is said, of
having been disappointed in his aspirations to the bishopric of Sebaste, he began to assert that bishops and presbyters
were equal—an opinion which in those days was altogether new, since almost all
the sects had at their outset been careful to obtain episcopal ordination for
their ministers, and even those which had departed from the usual form of
polity had acknowledged the necessity of a graduated hierarchy. Yet
although Aerius denied the Divine institution of episcopacy, he
appears to have admitted its lawfulness. He denied the utility of stated fasts,
and of prayers and alms for the departed; his followers, in determined
opposition to the church, chose Sunday for their occasional fasts, while they
ate freely on the fourth and sixth days of the week, and spent the penitential
part of the paschal season in feasting. It would seem, indeed, that
Aerius altogether objected to the celebration of Easter; although some
writers have supposed that his objections were directed only against the
practice of eating the paschal lamb, which had been retained until his time in
some churches, and which he regarded as a remnant of Judaism.
Among the western opponents of the prevailing system
was Jovinian, a monk of Rome, who began to publish his opinions about A.D.
388. Although he did not forsake his monastic profession, one of his chief
tenets was a denial of the superiority usually ascribed to celibacy. He denied
the perpetual virginity of the Redeemer's mother, and maintained that, if
single and married persons were equal in other respects, their conditions were
also equal. He combated the exaggerated reverence which was attached to the act
of martyrdom. He denied the merit of fasting, and the distinctions of food. He
maintained, with a strange perversion of Scripture texts, that there was no
other distinction between men than the grand division into righteous and
wicked; that there was no difference of grades in either class, and that there
would hereafter be no difference of degrees in rewards or in punishments.
Whosoever had been truly baptized had, according to Jovinian, nothing
further to gain by progress in the Christian life; he had only to preserve that
which was already secured to him. But the baptism which Jovinian regarded
as true was different from the sacrament of the church; indeed, he altogether
set aside the idea of the visible church. The true baptism, he said, was a baptism
of the Spirit, conferring indefectible grace, so that they who had it could not
be overcome by the devil. If any one, after receiving the baptismal
sacrament, fell into sin, it was a proof that he had never received inward
baptism; but such a person might, on repentance, yet be made partaker of the
true spiritual baptism. All sins were regarded by Jovinian as equal;
nor did he admit any difference as to guilt between those which were committed
before baptism and those which followed after it.
With such doctrines there was naturally connected an
insufficient idea as to the importance of individual
sins. Jovinian’s opinions were favoured by the popular
feeling at Rome, where he made numerous converts, and induced many persons of
both sexes, who had before embraced the celibate life, to marry; but among the
clergy he found no adherents. After having been condemned and excommunicated in
390, by a synod under Siricius, he repaired to
Milan, m the hope of finding favour with Theodosius; but Ambrose had
been warned against him by Siricius, and the
Roman sentence was repeated at Milan. Jerome wrote against him with violent
personality, and in so doing exaggerated the merits of celibacy to such a
degree as to give Jovinian’s cause an advantage, while his own
friends were dismayed at his indiscretion. Pammachius (who had
married a daughter of Paula, and on her death had renounced eminent wealth and
station to become a monk) endeavoured, although in vain, to suppress the
treatise; and, in order to take off the effects of its extravagance, Augustine
wrote in a more moderate strain a book Of the Good of Marriage. Nothing
further is known of Jovinian. Jerome speaks of him as dead in 404; yet it
has been conjectured that he was the same who, under the name of Jovian, was charged
eight years later with disturbing the Roman church by holding religious
meetings, and was sentenced by an edict of Honorius to be severely beaten and
afterwards banished.
Another of adversaries may be fitly noticed in this
place, although he did not appear until somewhat later than the time embraced
in the preceding chapters.
Vigilantius was the son of an innkeeper at Calagurris (Hourra, or Caskres), on the French side of the Pyrenees. After having
been employed in early youth in his father's trade, he was taken into the
household of Sulpicius Severus, the biographer of St. Martin, where
he enjoyed the opportunity of applying himself to letters; and he was advanced
to the order of presbyter. Through Sulpicius he became acquainted
with Paulinus, a noble Aquitanian of Roman family, who, after having
filled high secular offices—even, it is said, the consulship— forsook the
world, was forcibly ordained a presbyter at Barcelona, and settled at Nola in
Campania, in order that he might be near the tomb of St. Felix, a confessor of
the time of Decius. Paulinus may be regarded as an example of the
manner in which the spirit of the age acted on a religious and enthusiastic
mind. In the fervour of penitence for a life of which he probably
exaggerated the sinfulness, he persuaded his wife Terasia to
renounce the married estate, sold all her property as well as his own, and
lived monastically with a few companions in the practice of works of piety and
charity. His reverence for saints was carried to an extent beyond that which
had as yet become usual. He devoted himself especially to St. Felix: he built a
church over the tomb, and adorned it with paintings, among which were scenes
from the Old Testament and a symbolical representation of the Trinity. Every
year, on the festival of the confessor, Paulinus produced a poem in
celebration of his life or miracles; every year he repaired to Rome for
the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. The example and influence of a person
so distinguished by rank and so devout in life, who was the correspondent of
Jerome, Augustine, Rufinus, and others of the most eminent among his
contemporaries, could not fail to advance greatly the superstitions to which he
was addicted.
Vigilantius, after having
visited Paulinus at Nola, set out for the east, being furnished by
him with a letter of introduction to Jerome, which procured for him an
honourable reception from the recluse of Bethlehem. But disagreements soon
arose. Vigilantius accused Jerome of Origenism, and although he retracted
the charge before leaving Bethlehem, he again asserted it in his own country.
Some time after his return to the
west, Vigilantius began to vent peculiar opinions. He assailed the
prevailing excess of reverence for departed saints; he maintained that their
souls, which existed “in Abraham’s bosom, or in the place of rest, or under
God's altar”, could not be present at their tombs; he denied the possibility of
their intercession after death, and the miracles which were reported to be
wrought at their graves. Miracles (he said) were beneficial to unbelievers
only; by which he seems to have implied that, as the power of working them had
been given for the conviction of the Jews and heathens, the time in which they
might be expected was past. He attacked the veneration of relics as idolatrous,
and the lighting of candles at the tombs of saints in the daytime as a pagan
superstition. He wished that all vigils except that of Easter should be
abolished, and spoke of them as giving occasion to debauchery. He denied the
usefulness of fasting, continence, and monasticism, and regarded the profession
of chastity as a source of corruption. He maintained that it was better to
retain property, and to bestow of it by degrees for pious and charitable
purposes, than at once to relinquish the whole; and that it was better to seek
for objects of charity at home than to send money to Jerusalem.
Jerome, whose old animosity
against Vigilantius was revived by the publication of these
doctrines, attacked him with the most furious abuse. He reproached him with
having been a tapster, and told him that he now applied to Holy Scripture the
same tricks of falsification which he had formerly practised on the
wine which he dispensed and on the money which he gave in change; that he opposed
fasting, continence and sobriety, because they interfered with the profits of
his early trade. The argumentative part of the pamphlet cannot be described as
very happy. Jerome partly denies the existence of the superstitions
which Vigilantius had censured—or, at least, he denies that they
existed as anything more than popular usages, unsanctioned by the church; and,
by way of overwhelming his opponent, he asks how he can presume to question
practices which had been approved by emperors and bishops.
In justice to Vigilantius, it ought to be
remembered that our only knowledge of his opinions comes from a very violent
and unscrupulous adversary. They would seem to have been produced by a reaction
from the system in which he had been for a time engaged—the system exemplified
in his patron Sulpicius, in Paulinus, and more coarsely in Jerome. It
is a circumstance greatly in his favour that, to the vexation of his
opponents, his own bishop showed him countenance, and that he found other
supporters in the episcopal order; and although we may hesitate to acquit him
of error, there can be little doubt that it is an abuse of language to brand
him with the title of heretic.
Nothing is known of the later history
of Vigilantius. His doctrines —urged probably with a blameable vehemence
and confidence— were so much opposed to the current of the time, that they did
not require a council to condemn them; and they were soon obliterated by the
Vandal invasion, to which it has been conjectured that their author himself may
have fallen a victim.
At the end of a period so full of controversy as the
fourth century, I may advert to an objection which has often been brought
against preceding writers, and to which I cannot but feel that my own work is
liable, in common with theirs. It is said that Church-history, as it is usually
written, is only a record of quarrels; and wishes are expressed for a history
which should more fully display the fruits of the gospel for good. On some such
principle Milner wrote; but if the required book were possible, it cannot be
said that Milner has superseded the need of further labours in the
same line. I believe, however, that the plausible objection in question is
founded on a misconception. Church-history must follow the analogy of secular
history. As the one deals in detail with wrongs and calamities, with wars, with
intrigues, with factions, but must pass over with mere general words the
blessings of prosperity, and must leave utterly unnoticed the happiness which
is enjoyed not only under good governments, but even notwithstanding the very
worst; so the other must dwell on the sad story of errors and contentions, and
must allow the better side to remain untold. It is not the “peace on earth”,
but the “sword” that must be its theme. History takes cognizance of men only as
they affect other men; of things only as they differ from the everyday course.
In Church history, even saints appear too commonly in their
least favourable aspect. The occasions which bring them forward are
often such as to draw forth their defects rather than their excellencies.
Their better part, in so far as it can be written, belongs mainly not to
history, but to biography; nay, even of noted and illustrious saints, the
highest graces are not matter even for biography; they cannot be written on
earth. And the great and immeasurable blessings of the gospel do not consist in
the production here and there of a conspicuous hero of the faith, but in its
effect on the vast unrecorded multitudes whom it has guided in life, whom it has
comforted in trouble, whose death it has filled with the hope of immortality.
Unrecorded as these things have been, we yet cannot doubt of their reality, but
are assured that the same benefits which we witness in our own day and in
our own sphere must in all times have flowed from the same enduring source.
Instead, therefore, of requiring from a historian of the church that which is
foreign to the nature of his task, we must read with the remembrance that the
better portion of Christian history is to be supplied by our own thoughts
—thoughts grounded on a belief in the Divine assurances, and confirmed by such
opportunities as we may have enjoyed of witnessing their fulfilment.
BOOK III.FROM THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS I TO THE PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY THE GREAT.A.D. 395-590CHAPTER I.
ARCADIUS AND HONORIUS.—ORIGENISTIC
CONTROVERSY.— ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM.
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