Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

II. THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY (TO A.D. 375).

DIOCLETIAN.—Once more the gigantic and weakened frame of the Roman Empire was invigorated by a change in the character of the chief rulers and in the method of government. Diocletian (284-305), one of a number of energetic emperors who were of Illyrian birth, first stripped the imperial office of its limitations, and converted it into an absolute monarchy. This new system was carried to its completion by Constantine. Diocletian took from the Senate what political jurisdiction was left to it. He abolished the difference between the treasury of the state and the private coffers of the prince. The precedence of Rome was taken away by making other great cities to be seats of government. There were to be two emperors under the title of Augustus, with two Caesars under them; and thus the empire was divided, for administrative purposes, into four parts. Maximian, the second Augustus, was to rule over Italy, Africa, and the islands, with Milan for his residence. Constantius Chlorus had the western provinces, —Spain, Gaul, and Britain. At Nicomedia, Diocletian, a man of imposing presence and of great talents as a statesman, exercised rule for twenty years with efficiency and success. The new system, if it involved the peril of strife among the regents, led to a more vigilant and efficient government in the different provinces, and provided for a peaceful succession to the throne. But the government came to resemble, in the omnipotence of the emperor, in the obsequious homage paid to him, and in the cringing manners of the court, an Oriental despotism. The old heathen religion was considered by conservative Romans to be an essential part of the imperial system, and indispensable to the unity of the empire. It was this view, in connection with other influences, which moved Diocletian, near the close of his reign, in 303, to set on foot a systematic persecution of the Christian Church, by a series of extremely severe and well-contrived measures, through which it was designed to extirpate the new religion. The last great persecution, in the reign of Decius, cruel though it had been, did not approach in severity this final effort to exterminate the disciples of the Christian faith, who had now become very numerous. Terrible sufferings were inflicted, but without avail. In 305 Diocletian, partly on account of a serious illness, formally abdicated, and obliged Maximian to do the same. Civil wars followed, until Constantine, the son of Constantius, gained the supremacy, first as joint ruler with Licinius, who governed in the East, and then, after a bloody struggle which began in A.D. 314, as sole master of the empire (A.D. 323).

CONSTANTINE (A.D. 306-337).—The career of Constantine was stained by acts of cruelty towards members of his own family. In the closing period of his life, he was less just and humane than in earlier days. The change which had taken place in the imperial system was signally manifest in his removal of the seat of government to CONSTANTINOPLE, which was built up by him, and named in his honor. Placed between Europe and Asia, on a tongue of land where it was protected from assault, it was admirably suited for a metropolis. But the change of capital involved dangers for the western portions of the empire, exposed as they were to the assaults of the barbarians. The changes in the government begun by Diocletian were completed by Constantine. The empire was divided, for purposes of government, into four prefectures, each of which was subdivided into dioceses. Constantine established, likewise, different classes of nobles, the type of modern systems of nobility. He organized the army afresh, under the Master of the Horse and Master of the Foot, each, however, commanding, in action, both infantry and cavalry, and each having under him dukes and counts. In short, the system of central and despotic administration, with subordinate rulers, which Diocletian began, was perfected by Constantine. Diocletian, in order to fortify the imperial power against the army, had shared his power with "a cabinet of emperors," which his genius enabled him to control. To prevent the breaking up of the empire through the system of viceroys thus created to preserve it, Constantine separated the civil authority from the military as regards the subordinate rulers, while both functions were united in himself. He still further exalted his throne by giving it even more of an Oriental character, by creating a multitude of officials, who were satellites of the sovereign, and by becoming the secular head and guardian of the Christian Church. The arrangements of his court, with its grades of officials, from the chamberlain downwards, were after the Oriental pattern.

THE DOWNFALL OF HEATHENISM.

PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY.—The failure of the grand attempt of Diocletian to exterminate Christianity was an indication of its coming triumph. Its progress had been gradual yet rapid, and, in its earlier stages especially, obscure. Of the labors of most of the apostles we know little. On the approach of the Jewish war (p. 180), the Apostle John, and other Christians with him, had repaired to Asia Minor. There, at Ephesus, this apostle lived until the reign of Trajan, and from that center exerted a wide influence, the traces of which are marked and various. The cities were the principal scenes of early missionary work. They were the "strategic points." In them it was easier for Christian preachers to gain a hearing, and in them they were exempt from the hindrance created by strange dialects. Wherever Christians went, even for purposes of trade or mechanical industry, they carried the seeds of the new doctrine. Even with regard to the churches of Alexandria and Carthage, which became so flourishing, and in the case of the church at Rome itself, we can not say how they were first planted. The exultant terms in which the ecclesiastical writers at the end, and even as early as the middle, of the second century speak of the increasing number of the converts, proves that the Christian cause was fast gaining ground. Its adherents were sometimes of the higher class, but mostly from the ranks of the poor.

PERSECUTIONS.—Persecution from the side of the heathen began among the populace. Always when fire, tempest, or plague occurred, they were ascribed to the wrath of the heathen gods at the desertion of their altars, and the cry was for Christian blood. But Christianity, from the time of Trajan, was an illegal religion. Magistrates might at any time require Christians to do homage to the emperor's bust, or to burn incense to the old divinities. To make a proselyte of a Roman citizen, or to meet in private companies for worship, was unlawful. The persecutions by public authority have been said to be ten; but this number is too small if all of them are reckoned, and too large if only those of wide extent are included. The constancy with which even young women and children sometimes endured the torture, excited wonder in the beholders. Among the more noted martyrs are Ignatius, bishop of Antioch (116); Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who had been a pupil of the Apostle John, and was put to death in 155; and Cyprian, the aged bishop of Carthage, one of the leading ecclesiastics of the time, who suffered under Valerian in 258.

THE CHURCH UNDER CONSTANTINE.—The accession of Constantine made Christianity the predominant religion in the Roman Empire. His conversion was gradual. More and more he came to rely for support in his conflicts with his rivals upon the God of the Christians. The sign of the cross, which he said that he beheld in the sky, and which led him to make the cross his standard, may have been an optical illusion occasioned partly by his own mental state at the moment, when, after prayer, he was standing at noon-day in the door of his tent. He remained, like many others in that day, not without relics of the old beliefs, as is seen from inscriptions on his coins, and other evidences. His own baptism he deferred until he was near his end, on account of the prevalent idea that all previous guilt is effaced in the baptismal water. The edict of unrestricted toleration was issued from Milan in 312. Constantine did not proscribe heathenism. He forbade immoral rites, and rites connected with magic and sorcery. But, with this exception, heathen worshipers were not molested. But the emperor gave his zealous personal countenance to the Christian cause, and marks of his favor to its adherents. By the privileges and immunities which he granted to the Church and its ministers, he did more than he would have been likely to effect by the use of severity against its adversaries. ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.—The early Christian societies were little republics, at first under the supervision of the apostles. Their organization shaped itself partly after the model of the synagogue, and partly from the pattern of the civil communities and the voluntary associations about them. In the apostolic age a body of elders or bishops and a body of deacons in each church guided its affairs, while the members took an active part in the choice of their officers, and in the general direction of ecclesiastical proceedings. In the second century, when we get a distinct view of the churches after the obscure interval that follows the age of the apostles, we find that over the elders is a bishop, whose office grows in importance as the churches become larger, as the need of more compact organization is felt, and as the clergy become more and more distinct from the laity. The bishop of the city church acquires jurisdiction over the adjacent country churches. The bishop in the capital of each province comes to exercise a certain superintendence within the province. This is the metropolitan system. More and more the bishops of the great cities, especially Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, exercise a parallel supervision in larger divisions of the empire. This is the patriarchal system. As early as the closing part of the second century, the catholic or universal church presents itself before us, conceived of as a unity which is made such by the hierarchy of bishops, and by connection with the apostolic sees,—the churches founded by the apostles in person. As the apostles were thought of as having a head in Peter, the bishops of Rome, who were looked on as his successors, had accorded to them a precedence over other bishops. The grandeur of Rome, the strength of the church there, its services to other churches in the empire, especially in the West, together with many other considerations additional to its alleged historic relation to Peter and to Paul, gave to the Roman See, as time went on, a growing and acknowledged pre-eminence. The custom of holding synods helped to build up the unity of the Church, and to give power and dignity to its officials.

SECTS: THEOLOGY.—The Church from the beginning had to contend with opposing sects. There was a desire to amalgamate the Christian doctrine with other systems. On the Jewish side, the Ebionites clung to the Old Testament ritual observances, a part of them being bitterly hostile to the Apostle Paul, and another part, the Nazareans, not sharing this fanatical feeling, but still adhering to the Jewish ceremonies. On the other hand, the Gnostics introduced a dualism, and ascribed to the Demiurge—a second deity, either subordinate to the supreme God, or antagonistic to him—the origination of this world and of the Old Testament religion. They made a compound of Christianity, Judaism, and heathen religion and speculation, each Gnostic sect giving to one or the other of these ingredients the preponderance in the strange and often fantastic medley. The controversy with heathenism was prosecuted with the pen. Of the numerous defenses of Christianity, now addressed to heathen rulers and now to its opponents in private stations, the most remarkable work in the first three centuries was the writing of Origen—who was the most eminent of the teachers of theology at Alexandria—in reply to Celsus. Origen, after scholarly labors so vast as to earn for him the title of the Adamantine, died in 254, in consequence of his sufferings in the Diocletian persecution. Two defenses of the Christian faith, composed about the middle of the second century by Justin Martyr, are specially instructive as to the state of Christian opinion and the customs of the Church. The first great center of theological activity was Alexandria, where philosophy was studied in a liberal spirit. In the East, the questions relative to the divinity of Jesus and the relation of the divine to the human nature, engrossed attention. In the West, it was the practical aspects of theology, the doctrine of sin and of the deliverance of the will by grace, which were chiefly discussed. The Arian controversy grew out of the assertion by Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, that Jesus was the first-made of all beings, the instrument of the creation of all other beings, but himself a creature. The leader of the orthodox opposition to this opinion was the famous Alexandrian archdeacon, afterwards bishop, Athanasius. This debate it was which led to the assembling, under the auspices of Constantine, of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), the first of a series of General Councils, for the adjudication of doctrinal disputes, that were held in this and the following centuries. The Arian doctrine was condemned at Nicaea, and, after a long contest in the period subsequent, was finally determined to be heretical. In the West, the main controversy was that raised by Pelagius, respecting the power of the will, the native character of men, and the agency of God in their conversion. In this debate, Augustine (354-430), the most eminent theologian of the West, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, was the renowned champion of the doctrine of grace against what he considered an exaggerated assertion of free-will. Pelagianism was condemned in the West, and nominally in the East where views intermediate between the Pelagians and Augustinians commonly prevailed. The most eminent scholar contemporary with Augustine was Jerome, who died in 420, the author of the Latin version of the Scriptures, called the Vulgate. Preceding Augustine in North Africa, early in the third century, was Tertullian, a vigorous and fervid writer, who first made Latin the vehicle of theological discussion; and, a little later, Cyprian, whose works relate chiefly to church unity and hierarchical government, of which he was a devoted champion. Late in the second century, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in Gaul, one of the most eminent ecclesiastics of that day, composed an elaborate work against the Gnostic heresies. Irenaeus had known Polycarp, a disciple of John the apostle.

CHRISTIAN LIFE.—Passing within the sphere of Christian life, there can be no doubt that Christianity exerted a power, of which there had been no experience before, in reforming the character and conduct of those even who had been addicted to crime and vice. The fraternal feeling of Christians for one another impressed the heathen about them as something new and singularly attractive. It expressed itself in unstinted charity for those in poverty, and in helpfulness for all sorts of distress. The church was a home for the weary and friendless. In the strong reaction against the sensuality of a dissolute society, ascetic tendencies appeared, which, in process of time, issued in monasticism. Anthony of Thebes, born about 250, was one of the earliest and most celebrated of the Anchorites, who chose a hermit life, and abjured all the luxuries of life and most of the comforts which belong to social existence. To the Anchorites succeeded the Caenobites, societies of monks who dwelt in a common habitation under fixed rules; and these were naturally followed by confederacies of such communities under one organization. The monastic vows were poverty, or the renunciation of property; celibacy, or abstinence from marriage; and obedience to the conventual superior. Sometimes in the early centuries great evils and abuses sprang up in connection with monastic life. For example, monks might become fanatical and violent. But they furnished numerous examples of sincere piety, and of unselfish and intrepid self-sacrifice for the welfare of others.

CHANGES IN WORSHIP.—As the Church grew in numbers and wealth, costly edifices were constructed for worship. The services within them became more elaborate. At length art was called in to adorn the Christian sanctuaries. Sculpture and painting were enlisted in the work of providing aids to devotion. Relics of saints and martyrs were cherished as sacred possessions. Religious observances were multiplied; and the Church, under the Christian emperors, with its array of clergy and of imposing ceremonies, assumed much of the stateliness and visible splendor that had belonged to the heathen system which it had supplanted.

LAST DAYS OF HEATHENISM.—When Christianity had become powerful, its disciples forgot the precepts of their Master, and sometimes persecuted the heathen. Christian mobs demolished the old temples. The great temple of Serapis in Alexandria was destroyed, and the statue of the god was broken in pieces. Theodosius I. (379-395) made the celebration of heathen rites a capital offense, and confiscated the property by which heathen worship had been supported. Arians, too, he persecuted, but with less harshness. The Eastern emperor, Justinian, suppressed the school of New Platonic philosophers at Athens, and banished the teachers (529). Heathenism lingered in remote districts, and was hence called paganism, or the religion of rustics. The last adherents of the ancient religion inhabited in the seventh century remote valleys of the Italian islands. The oracles were for ever dumb. The old divinities were never more to be invoked. But it was not by force that heathenism was extirpated. If it had not lost its vitality, it would have survived the penal laws against it. It perished by the expulsive energy of a better faith.

CAUSES OF THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY.—The causes of the spread and triumph of Christianity lie ultimately in the need which men feel of religion, especially in times of dread and distress, and in the intrinsic excellence which was felt to belong to Christianity. In the first and second centuries the dreary feeling engendered by the hollow skepticism that prevailed was favorable to the Christian cause. There was a void to be filled, and the gospel came to fill it. In the third century, when the progress of Christianity was specially rapid, there was a perceptible revival of religious feeling among the heathen; and this, too, operated to the advantage of the gospel. At least it must have done so in numerous instances. In that century the terrible plagues which desolated the empire, with the sufferings that sprung from wild anarchy and misgovernment, made the church a welcome asylum for the afflicted. In the first place, Christianity was a religion. It was neither a merely speculative nor a merely moral system. It took hold of the supernatural. Secondly, it presented to a corrupt society a moral ideal of spotless perfection. Thirdly, it offered, in the doctrine of the cross, a welcome solace,—consolation in life, with a sense of reconciliation, and the hope of everlasting good. Other causes, such as Gibbon enumerates, were operative. But these are themselves mostly effects or aspects of the gospel; or they were auxiliary, not principal, causes.

CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERTY.—The founders of Christianity had no thought of becoming the authors of a political revolution. They had a very different purpose in view. To overthrow the existing order of society would have been equally unwise and impracticable. What was needed was a new spirit of justice and of love. The virtues that were called for then were the passive virtues,—gentleness, forbearance, the calm endurance of ills of which there was no present remedy. The Christian spirit, therefore, did not evoke in the disciples of the new faith sentiments of liberty akin to those which had belonged to Greek and Roman heroes. Indirectly, however, Christianity brought into human society the germs of liberty. In the first place, while it enjoined absolute submission to rulers, it made an exception whenever their commands should require disobedience to God's law. This position involved the denial to the state of that absolute supremacy accorded to it by the ancients. The allegiance to the state became a qualified allegiance. Secondly, there arose within the state another community, which took into its hands, to a large extent, the regulation of social life. The boundaries of the two authorities might be indistinct, but there was a real division of control between them. It is true that tyranny might arise within the Christian organization itself: still, its very existence planted on the earth a principle of liberty, which was destined ultimately to work out the destruction of all tyranny, whether civil or religious. For the first time the rulers of the Roman world were faced by an opposition, meek yet too inflexible for all their power to overcome. This is the first stage in the history of modern liberty. The "heroic and invincible Athanasius" as Milton styles him, boldly confronted Constantine and his successors, and chose to spend twenty years of his life in voluntary or enforced exile rather than bow to their tyrannical decrees. Ambrose, the great archbishop of Milan, compelled the Emperor Theodosius—who, in a fit of anger had ordered a massacre at Thessalonica—to do penance before he could be admitted to the communion. Such occurrences indicate that the days of imperial omnipotence, even over unarmed subjects, were past.

SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE.—Constantine left his empire to his three unworthy sons. Constantine, the eldest, had the Western provinces for his share. He endeavored to wrest Italy from his brother Constans, but was slain at Aquileia (340). This event left Constans the master of the entire West. He took up his abode in Gaul, where he was slain by Magnentius, the leader of a mutinous body of soldiers (350). Constantius was at Edessa, engaged in war against the Persians. He marched westward, and routed Magnentius at Mursia, in Pannonia. This rival fled to Gaul, and was there attacked and destroyed. Gallus, the cousin of Constantius, was put to death for the murder of one of the emperor's officers (354). Julian, the brother of Gallus, was the sole remaining survivor of the family from which the emperor sprung. Constantius, under whom the whole empire was now for a few years (357-361) united, made a triumphal visit to Rome. He was the defender of the Arians, but he found it impossible to coerce the Roman Christians into the adoption of his opinion. The orthodox bishop whom he had banished, was restored. Constantius was succeeded by his cousin Julian (361-363), commonly called the Apostate. Fascinated by the heathen philosophy, and a secret convert to the old religion, he