EXPLANATION OF THE MAP.
(To be read after Chapter XXII.)
The Map is meant to give the names of such places only as are mentioned in the History.
The bounds of the patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem are marked as they were settled at the Council of Chalcedon, in the year 451.
Only the northern part of the Alexandrian patriarchate is seen, as the Map does not reach far enough to take in Abyssinia, which belonged to it.
At the time of the Council of Nicæa (A.D. 325) the bishop of Rome's patriarchate was confined to the middle and the south of Italy, with the Islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. It afterwards grew by degrees, until at length it took in all the countries of the west, although it had lost Illyricum, which was once a part of it. But this was not until long after the time to which our little book relates, and in the meanwhile its extent varied very much. The reason why its bounds, at the time of the Council of Chalcedon, or in the days of Gregory the Great, cannot well be marked in a map is, that in some countries the bishops of Rome had much influence, but had not power. They gave advice to the bishops of Gaul (or France), Spain, and Africa, and sometimes ventured to give them directions. But they could not make the bishops of those countries obey their directions, and had not authority over them in the same way as the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, or Jerusalem had over the bishops within their patriarchates. To mark such countries as belonging to the Roman patriarchate would be too much; to mark them as if they had no connexion with it would be too little.
SKETCHES
OF
CHURCH HISTORY.
CHAPTER I.
THE AGE OF THE APOSTLES.
FROM A.D. 33 TO A.D. 100.
The beginning of the Christian Church is reckoned from the great day on which the Holy Ghost came down, according as our Lord had promised to His Apostles. At that time, "Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven," were gathered together at Jerusalem, to keep the Feast of Pentecost (or Feast of Weeks), which was one of the three holy seasons at which God required His people to appear before Him in the place which He had chosen (Deuteronomy xvi. 16). Many of these devout men were converted, by what they then saw and heard, to believe the Gospel; and, when they returned to their own countries, they carried back with them the news of the wonderful things which had taken place at Jerusalem. After this, the Apostles went forth "into all the world," as their Master had ordered them, to "preach the Gospel to every creature" (St. Mark xvi. 15). The Book of Acts tells us something of what they did, and we may learn something more about it from the Epistles. And, although this be but a small part of the whole, it will give us a notion of the rest, if we consider that, while St. Paul was preaching in Asia Minor, in Greece, and at Rome, the other Apostles were busily doing the same work in other countries.
We must remember, too, the constant coming and going which in those days took place throughout the world; how Jews from all quarters went up to keep the passover and other feasts at Jerusalem; how the great Roman empire stretched from our own island of Britain as far as Persia and Ethiopia, and people from all parts of it were continually going to Rome and returning. We must consider how merchants travelled from country to country on account of their trade; how soldiers were sent into all quarters of the empire, and were moved about from one country to another. And from these things we may get some understanding of the way in which the knowledge of the Gospel would be spread, when once it had taken root in the great cities of Jerusalem and Rome. Thus it came to pass, that, by the end of the first hundred years after our Saviour's birth, something was known of the Christian faith throughout all the Roman empire, and even in countries beyond it; and if in many cases, only a very little was known, still even that was a gain, and served as a preparation for more.
The last chapter of the Acts leaves St. Paul at Rome, waiting for his trial on account of the things which the Jews had laid to his charge. We find from the Epistles that he afterwards got his liberty, and returned into the East. There is reason to suppose that he also visited Spain, as he had spoken of doing in his Epistle to the Romans (ch. xv. 28); and it has been thought by some that he even preached in Britain; but this does not seem likely. He was at last imprisoned again at Rome, where the wicked Emperor Nero persecuted the Christians very cruelly; and it is believed that both St. Peter and St. Paul were put to death there in the year of our Lord 68. The bishops of Rome afterwards set up claims to great power and honour, because they said that St. Peter was the first bishop of their church, and that they were his successors. But although we may reasonably believe that the Apostle was martyred at Rome, there does not appear to be any good ground for thinking that he had been settled there as bishop of the city.
All the Apostles, except St. John, are supposed to have been martyred (or put to death for the sake of the Gospel). St. James the Less, who was bishop of Jerusalem, was killed by the Jews in an uproar, about the year 62. Soon after this, the Romans sent their armies into Judea, and, after a bloody war, they took the city of Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and scattered the Jews all over the earth. Thus the Jews were punished, as our Lord had foretold, for the great sin of which they had been guilty in refusing to believe in Him, and in putting Him to death.
Thirty years after Nero's time another cruel emperor, Domitian, raised a fresh persecution against the Christians (A.D. 95). Among those who suffered were some of his own near relations; for the Gospel had now made its way among the great people of the earth, as well as among the poor, who were the first to listen to it. There is a story that the emperor was told that some persons of the family of David were living in the Holy Land, and that he sent for them, because he was afraid lest the Jews should set them up as princes, and should rebel against his government. They were two grandchildren of St. Jude, who was one of our Lord's kinsmen after the flesh, and therefore belonged to the house of David and the old kings of Judah. But these two were plain countrymen, who lived quietly and contentedly on their little farm, and were not likely to lead a rebellion, or to claim earthly kingdoms. And when they were carried before the emperor, they showed him their hands, which were rough and horny from working in the fields; and in answer to his questions about the kingdom of Christ, they said that it was not of this world, but spiritual and heavenly, and that it would appear at the end of the world, when the Saviour would come again to judge both the quick and the dead. So the emperor saw that there was nothing to fear from them, and he let them go.
It was during Domitian's persecution that St. John was banished to the island of Patmos, where he saw the visions which are described in his "Revelation." All the other Apostles had been long dead, and St. John had lived many years at Ephesus, where he governed the churches of the country around. After his return from Patmos he went about to all these churches, that he might repair the hurt which they had suffered in the persecution. In one of the towns which he visited, he noticed a young man of very pleasing looks, and called him forward, and desired the bishop of the place to take care of him. The bishop did so, and, after having properly trained the youth, he baptised and confirmed him. But when this had been done, the bishop thought that he need not watch over him so carefully as before; and the young man fell into vicious company, and went on from bad to worse, until at length he became the head of a band of robbers, who kept the whole country in terror. When the Apostle next visited the town, he asked after the charge which he had put into the bishop's hands. The bishop, with shame and grief, answered that the young man was dead, and, on being further questioned, he explained that he meant dead in sins, and told all the story. St. John, after having blamed him because he had not taken more care, asked where the robbers were to be found, and set off on horseback for their haunt, where he was seized by some of the band, and was carried before the captain. The young man, on seeing him, knew him at once, and could not bear his look, but ran away to hide himself. But the Apostle called him back, told him that there was yet hope for him through Christ, and spoke in such a moving way that the robber agreed to return to the town. There he was once more received into the Church as a penitent; and he spent the rest of his days in repentance for his sins, and in thankfulness for the mercy which had been shown to him.
St. John, in his old age, was much troubled by false teachers, who had begun to corrupt the Gospel. These persons are called heretics, and their doctrines are called heresy, from a Greek word which means to choose, because they chose to follow their own fancies, instead of receiving the Gospel as the Apostles and the Church taught it. Simon the sorcerer, who is mentioned in the eighth chapter of the Acts, is counted as the first heretic, and even in the time of the Apostles a number of others arose, such as Hymenæus, Philetus, and Alexander, who are mentioned by St. Paul (1 Tim. i. 19, 20; 2 Tim. ii. 17, 18). These earliest heretics were mostly of the kind called Gnostics,—a word which means that they pretended to be more knowing than ordinary Christians; and perhaps St. Paul may have meant them especially when he warned Timothy against "science" (or knowledge) "falsely so called" (1 Tim. vi. 20). Their doctrines were a strange mixture of Jewish and heathen notions with Christianity; and it is curious that some of the very strangest of their opinions have been brought up again from time to time by people who fancied that they had found out something new, while they had only fallen into old errors, which had been condemned by the Church hundreds of years before.
St. John lived to about the age of a hundred. He was at last so weak that he could not walk into the church; so he was carried in, and used to say continually to his people, "Little children, love one another." Some of them, after a time, began to be tired of hearing this, and asked him why he repeated the words so often, and said nothing else to them. The Apostle answered, "Because it is the Lord's commandment, and if this be done it is enough."
CHAPTER II.
ST. IGNATIUS.
A.D. 116.
When our Lord ascended into Heaven, He left the government of His Church to the Apostles. We are told that during the forty days between His rising from the grave and His ascension, He gave commandments unto the Apostles, and spoke of the things pertaining (or belonging) to the kingdom of God (Acts i. 2, 3). Thus they knew what they were to do when their Master should be no longer with them; and one of the first things which they did, even without waiting until His promise of sending the Holy Ghost should be fulfilled, was to choose St. Matthias into the place which had been left empty by the fall of the traitor Judas (Acts i. 15-26).
After this we find that they appointed other persons to help them in their work. First, they appointed the deacons, to take care of the poor and to assist in other services. Then they appointed presbyters (or elders), to undertake the charge of congregations. Afterwards, we find St. Paul sending Timothy to Ephesus, and Titus into the island of Crete (now called Candia), with power to "ordain elders in every city" (Tit. i. 5), and to govern all the churches within a large country. Thus, then, three kinds (or orders) of ministers of the Church are mentioned in the Acts and Epistles. The deacons are lowest; the presbyters, or elders, are next; and, above these, there is a higher order, made up of the Apostles themselves, with such persons as Timothy and Titus, who had to look after a great number of presbyters and deacons, and were also the chief spiritual pastors (or shepherds) of the people who were under the care of these presbyters and deacons. In the New Testament, the name of bishops (which means overseers) is sometimes given to the Apostles and other clergy of the highest order, and sometimes to the presbyters; but after a time it was given only to the highest order, and when the Apostles were dead, the bishops had the chief government of the Church. It has since been found convenient that some bishops should be placed above others, and should be called by higher titles, such as archbishops and patriarchs; but these all belong to the same order of bishops; just as in a parish, although the rector and the curate have different titles, and one of them is above the other, they are both most commonly presbyters (or, as we now say, priests), and so they both belong to the same order in the ministry.
One of the most famous among the early bishops was St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, the place where the disciples were first called Christians (Acts xi. 26). Antioch was the chief city of Syria, and was so large that it had more than two hundred thousand inhabitants. St. Peter himself is said to have been its bishop for some years; and, although this is perhaps a mistake, it is worth remembering, because we shall find by-and-by that much was said about the bishops of Antioch being St. Peter's successors, as well as the bishops of Rome.
Ignatius had known St. John, and was made bishop of Antioch about thirty years before the Apostle's death. He had governed his church for forty years or more, when the Emperor Trajan came to Antioch. In the Roman history, Trajan is described as one of the best among the emperors; but he did not treat the Christians well. He seems never to have thought that the Gospel could possibly be true, and thus he did not take the trouble to inquire what the Christians really believed or did. They were obliged in those days to hold their worship in secret, and mostly by night, or very early in the morning, because it would not have been safe to meet openly; and hence, the heathens, who did not know what was done at their meetings, were tempted to fancy all manner of shocking things, such as that the Christians practised magic; that they worshipped the head of an ass; that they offered children in sacrifice; and that they ate human flesh! It is not likely that the Emperor Trajan believed such foolish tales as these; and, when he did make some inquiry about the ways of the Christians, he heard nothing but what was good of them. But still he might think that there was some mischief behind; and he might fear lest the secret meetings of the Christians should have something to do with plots against his government; and so, as I have said, he was no friend to them.
When Trajan came to Antioch, St. Ignatius was carried before him. The emperor asked what evil spirit possessed him, so that he not only broke the laws by refusing to serve the gods of Rome, but persuaded others to do the same. Ignatius answered, that he was not possessed by any evil spirit; that he was a servant of Christ; that by His help he defeated the malice of evil spirits; and that he bore his God and Saviour within his heart. After some more questions and answers, the emperor ordered that he should be carried in chains to Rome, and there should be devoured by wild beasts. When Ignatius heard this terrible sentence, he was so far from being frightened, that he burst forth into thankfulness and rejoicing, because he was allowed to suffer for his Saviour, and for the deliverance of his people.
It was a long and toilsome journey, over land and sea, from Antioch to Rome; and an old man, such as Ignatius, was ill able to bear it, especially as winter was coming on. He was to be chained, too, and the soldiers who had the charge of him behaved very rudely and cruelly to him. And no doubt the emperor thought that, by sending so venerable a bishop in this way to suffer so fearful and so disgraceful a death (to which only the very lowest wretches were usually sentenced), he should terrify other Christians into forsaking their faith. But instead of this, the courage, and the patience with which St. Ignatius bore his sufferings gave the Christians fresh spirit to endure whatever might come on them.
The news that the holy bishop of Antioch was to be carried to Rome soon spread, and at many places on the way the bishops, clergy, and people flocked together, that they might see him, and pray and talk with him, and receive his blessing. And when he could find time, he wrote letters to various churches, exhorting them to stand fast in the faith, to be at peace among themselves, to obey the bishops who were set over them, and to advance in all holy living. One of the letters was written to the Church at Rome, and was sent on by some persons who were travelling by a shorter way. St. Ignatius begs, in this letter, that the Romans will not try to save him from death. "I am the wheat of God," he says, "let me be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather do ye encourage the beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of my body, so that, when dead, I may not be troublesome to any one." He even says that, if the lions should hang back, he will himself provoke them to attack him. It would not be right for ordinary people to speak in this way, and the Church has always disapproved of those who threw themselves in the way of persecution. But a holy man who had served God for so many years as Ignatius, might well speak in a way which would not become ordinary Christians. When he was called to die for his people and for the truth of Christ, he might even take it as a token of God's favour, and might long for his deliverance from the troubles and the trials of this world, as St. Paul said of himself, that he "had a desire to depart, and to be with Christ" (Phil. i. 23).
He reached Rome just in time for some games which were to take place a little before Christmas; for the Romans were cruel enough to amuse themselves with setting wild beasts to tear and devour men, in vast places called amphitheatres, at their public games. When the Christians of Rome heard that Ignatius was near the city, great numbers of them went out to meet him, and they said that they would try to persuade the people in the amphitheatre to beg that he might not be put to death. But he entreated, as he had before done in his letter, that they would do nothing to hinder him from glorifying God by his death; and he knelt down with them, and prayed that they might continue in faith and love, and that the persecution might soon come to an end. As it was the last day of the games, and they were nearly over, he was then hurried into the amphitheatre (called the Coliseum), which was so large that tens of thousands of people might look on. And in this place (of which the ruins are still to be seen), St. Ignatius was torn to death by wild beasts, so that only a few of his larger bones were left, which the Christians took up and conveyed to his own city of Antioch.
CHAPTER III.
ST. JUSTIN, MARTYR.
A.D. 166.
Although Trajan was no friend to the Gospel, and put St. Ignatius to death, he made a law which must have been a great relief to the Christians. Until then, they were liable to be sought out, and any one might inform against them; but Trajan ordered that they should not be sought out, although, if they were discovered, and refused to give up their faith, they were to be punished. The next emperor, too, whose name was Hadrian (A.D. 117 to 138), did something to make their condition better; but it was still one of great hardship and danger. Notwithstanding the new laws, any governor of a country, who disliked the Christians, had the power to persecute and vex them cruelly. And the common people among the heathens still believed the horrid stories of their killing children and eating human flesh. If there was a famine or a plague,—if the river Tiber, which runs through Rome, rose above its usual height and did mischief to the neighbouring buildings,—or if the emperor's armies were defeated in war, the blame of all was laid on the Christians. It was said that all these things were judgments from the gods, who were angry because the Christians were allowed to live. And then at the public games, such as those at which St. Ignatius was put to death, the people used to cry out, "Throw the Christians to the lions! away with the godless wretches!" For, as the Christians were obliged to hold their worship secretly, and had no images like those of the heathen gods, and did not offer any sacrifices of beasts, as the heathens did, it was thought that they had no God at all; since the heathens could not raise their minds to the thought of that God who is a spirit, and who is not to be worshipped under any bodily shape. It was, therefore, a great relief when the Emperor Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138 to 161), who was a mild and gentle old man, ordered that governors and magistrates should not give way to such outcries, and that the Christians should no longer be punished for their religion only, unless they were found to have done wrong in some other way.
There were now many learned men in the Church, and some of these began to write books in defence of their faith. One of them, Athenagoras, had undertaken, while he was a heathen, to show that the Gospel was all a deceit; but when he looked further into the matter, he found that it was very different from what he had fancied; and then he was converted, and, instead of writing against the Gospel, he wrote in favour of it.
Another of these learned men was Justin, who was born at Samaria, and was trained in all the wisdom of the Greeks. For the Greeks, as they were left without such light as God had given to the Jews, set themselves to seek out wisdom in all sorts of ways. And, as they had no certain truth from heaven to guide them, they were divided into a number of different parties, such as the Epicureans, and the Stoics, who disputed with St. Paul at Athens (Acts xvii. 18). These all called themselves philosophers (which means, lovers of wisdom); and each kind of them thought to be wiser than all the rest. Justin, then, having a strong desire to know the truth, tried one kind of philosophy after another, but could not find rest for his spirit in any of them.
One day, as he was walking thoughtfully on the sea-shore, he observed an old man of grave and mild appearance, who was following him closely, and at length entered into talk with him. The old man told Justin that it was of no use to search after wisdom in the books of the philosophers; and went on to speak of God the maker of all things, of the prophecies which He had given to men in the time of the Old Testament, and how they had been fulfilled in the life and death of the blessed Jesus. Thus Justin was brought to the knowledge of the Gospel; and the more he learnt of it, the more was he convinced of its truth, as he came to know how pure and holy its doctrines and its rules were, and as he saw the love which Christians bore towards each other, and the patience and firmness with which they endured sufferings and death for their Master's sake. And now, although he still called himself a philosopher, and wore the long cloak which was the common dress of philosophers, the wisdom which he taught was not heathen but Christian wisdom. He lived mostly at Rome, where scholars flocked to him in great numbers. And he wrote books in defence of the Gospel against heathens, Jews, and heretics, or false Christians.
The old Emperor Antoninus Pius, under whom the Christians had been allowed to live in peace and safety, died in the year 161, and was succeeded by Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, whom he had adopted as his son. Marcus Aurelius was not only one of the best emperors, but in many ways was one of the best of all the heathens. He had a great character for gentleness, kindness, and justice, and he was fond of books, and liked to have philosophers and learned men about him. But, unhappily, these people gave him a very bad notion of Christianity; and, as he knew no more of it than what they told him, he took a strong dislike to it. And thus, although he was just and kind to his other subjects, the Christians suffered more under his reign than they had ever done before. All the misfortunes that took place, such as rebellions, defeats in war, plague, and scarcity, were laid to the blame of the Christians; and the emperor himself seems to have thought that they were in fault, as he made some new laws against them.
Now the success which Justin had as a teacher at Rome had long raised the envy and malice of the heathen philosophers; and, when these new laws against the Christians came out, one Crescens, a philosopher of the kind called Cynics, or doggish (on account of their snarling, currish ways), contrived that Justin should be carried before a judge, on the charge of being a Christian. The judge questioned him as to his belief, and as to the meetings of the Christians; to which Justin answered that he believed in one God, and in the Saviour Christ, the Son of God, but he refused to say anything which could betray his brethren to the persecutors. The judge then threatened him with scourging and death: but Justin replied that the sufferings of this world were nothing to the glory which Christ had promised to His people in the world to come. Then he and the others who had been brought up for trial with him were asked whether they would offer sacrifice to the gods of the heathen, and as they refused to do this, and to forsake their faith, they were all beheaded (A.D. 166). And on account of the death which he thus suffered for the Gospel, Justin has ever since been especially styled "The Martyr."
CHAPTER IV.
ST. POLYCARP.
A.D. 166.
About the same time with Justin the Martyr, St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, was put to death. He was a very old man; for it was almost ninety years since he had been converted from heathenism. He had known St. John, and is supposed to have been made bishop of Smyrna by that Apostle himself; and he had been a friend of St. Ignatius, who, as we have seen, suffered martyrdom fifty years before. From all these things, and from his wise and holy character, he was looked up to as a father by all the Churches, and his mild advice had sometimes put an end to differences of opinion which but for him might have turned into lasting quarrels.
When the persecution reached Smyrna, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a number of Christians suffered with great constancy, and the heathen multitude, being provoked at their refusal to give up their faith, cried out for the death of Polycarp. The aged bishop, although he was ready to die for his Saviour, remembered that it was not right to throw himself in the way of danger; so he left the city, and went first to one village in the neighbourhood, and then to another. But he was discovered in his hiding-place, and when he saw the soldiers who were come to seize him, he calmly said, "God's will be done!" He desired that some food should be given to them, and, while they were eating, he spent the time in prayer. He was then set on an ass, and led towards Smyrna; and, when he was near the town, one of the heathen magistrates came by in his chariot, and took him up into it. The magistrate tried to persuade Polycarp to sacrifice to the gods; but finding that he could make nothing of him, he pushed him out of the chariot so roughly that the old man fell and broke his leg. But Polycarp bore the pain without showing how much he was hurt, and the soldiers led him into the amphitheatre, where great numbers of people were gathered together. When all these saw him, they set up loud cries of rage and savage delight; but Polycarp thought, as he entered the place, that he heard a voice saying to him, "Be strong and play the man!" and he did not heed all the shouting of the crowd. The governor desired him to deny Christ, and said that, if he would, his life should be spared. But the faithful bishop answered, "Fourscore and six years have I served Christ, and He hath never done me wrong; how then can I now blaspheme my King and Saviour?" The governor again and again urged him, as if in a friendly way, to sacrifice; but Polycarp stedfastly refused. He next threatened to let wild beasts loose on him; and as Polycarp still showed no fear, he said that he would burn him alive. "You threaten me," said the bishop, "with a fire which lasts but a short time; but you know not of that eternal fire which is prepared for the wicked." A stake was then set up, and a pile of wood was collected around it. Polycarp walked to the place with a calm and cheerful look, and, as the executioners were going to fasten him to the stake with iron cramps, he begged them to spare themselves the trouble: "He who gives me the strength to bear the flames," he said, "will enable me to remain steady." He was therefore only tied to the stake with cords, and as he stood thus bound, he uttered a thanksgiving for being allowed to suffer after the pattern of his Lord and Saviour. When his prayer was ended, the wood was set on fire, but we are told that the flames swept round him, looking like the sail of a ship swollen by the wind, while he remained unhurt in the midst of them. One of the executioners, seeing this, plunged a sword into the martyr's breast, and the blood rushed forth in such a stream that it put out the fire. But the persecutors, who were resolved that the Christians should not have their bishop's body, lighted the wood again, and burnt the corpse, so that only a few of the bones remained; and these the Christians gathered out, and gave them an honourable burial. It was on Easter eve that St. Polycarp suffered, in the year of our Lord 166.
CHAPTER V.
THE MARTYRS OF LYONS AND VIENNE.
A.D. 177.
Many other martyrs suffered in various parts of the empire under the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Among the most famous of these are the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, in the south of France (or Gaul, as it was then called), where a company of missionaries from Asia Minor had settled with a bishop named Pothinus at their head. The persecution at Lyons and Vienne was begun by the mob of those towns, who insulted the Christians in the streets, broke into their houses, and committed other such outrages against them. Then a great number of Christians were seized, and imprisoned in horrid dungeons, where many died from want of food, or from the bad and unwholesome air. The bishop, Pothinus, who was ninety years of age, and had long been very ill, was carried before the governor, and was asked, "Who is the God of Christians?" Pothinus saw that the governor did not put this question from any good feeling; so he answered, "If thou be worthy, thou shalt know." The bishop, old and feeble as he was, was then dragged about by soldiers, and such of the mob as could reach him gave him blows and kicks, while others, who were further off, threw anything which came to hand at him; and, after this cruel usage, he was put into prison, where he died within two days.
The other prisoners were tortured for six days together in a variety of horrible ways. Their limbs were stretched on the rack; they were cruelly scourged; some had hot plates of iron applied to them, and some were made to sit in a red-hot iron chair. The firmness with which they bore these dreadful trials gave courage to some of their brethren, who at first had agreed to sacrifice, so that these now again declared themselves Christians, and joined the others in suffering. As all the tortures were of no effect, the prisoners were at length put to death. Some were thrown to wild beasts; but those who were citizens of Rome were beheaded; for it was not lawful to give a Roman citizen up to wild beasts, just as we know from St. Paul's case at Philippi that it was not lawful to scourge a citizen (Acts xvi. 37).
Among the martyrs was a boy from Asia, only fifteen years old, who was taken every day to see the tortures of the rest, in the hope that he might be frightened into denying his Saviour; but he was not shaken by the terrible sights, and for his constancy he was cruelly put to death on the last day. The greatest cruelties of all, however, were borne by a young woman named Blandina. She was slave to a Christian lady; and, although the Christians regarded their slaves with a kindness very unlike the usual feeling of heathen masters towards them, this lady seems yet to have thought that a slave was not likely to endure tortures so courageously as a free person; and she was the more afraid because Blandina was not strong in body. But the poor slave's faith was not to be overcome. Day after day she bravely bore every cruelty that the persecutors could think of; and all that they could wring out from her was, "I am a Christian, and nothing wrong is done among us!"
The heathen were not content with putting the martyrs to death with tortures, or allowing them to die in prison. They cast their dead bodies to the dogs, and caused them to be watched day and night, lest the other Christians should give them burial; and after this, they burnt the bones, and threw the ashes of them into the river Rhone, by way of mocking at the notion of a resurrection. For, as St. Paul had found at Athens (Acts xvii. 32), and elsewhere, there was no part of the Gospel which the heathen in general thought so hard to believe as the doctrine that that which is "sown in corruption" shall hereafter be "raised in incorruption;" that that which "is sown a natural body" will one day be "raised a spiritual body" (1 Cor. xv. 42-44).
CHAPTER VI.
TERTULLIAN—PERPETUA AND HER COMPANIONS.
A.D. 181-206.
The Emperor Marcus Aurelius died in 181, and the Church was little troubled by persecution for the following twenty years.
About this time a false teacher named Montanus made much noise in the world. He was born in Phrygia, and seems to have been crazed in his mind. He used to fall into fits, and while in them, he uttered ravings which were taken for prophecies, or messages from heaven: and some women who followed him also pretended to be prophetesses. These people taught a very strict way of living, and thus many persons who wished to lead holy lives were deceived into running after them. One of these was Tertullian, of Carthage, in Africa, a very clever and learned man, who had been converted from heathenism, and had written some books in defence of the Gospel. But he was of a proud and impatient temper, and did not rightly consider how our Lord Himself had said that there would always be a mixture of evil with the good in His Church on earth (St. Matt. xiii. 38, 48). And hence, when Montanus pretended to set up a new church, in which there should be none but good and holy people, Tertullian fell into the snare, and left the true Church to join the Montanists (as the followers of Montanus were called). From that time he wrote very bitterly against the Church; but he still continued to defend the Gospel in his books against Jews and heathens, and all kinds of false teachers, except Montanus. And when he was dead, his good deeds were remembered more than his fall, so that, with all his faults, his name has always been held in respect.
After more than twenty years of peace, there were cruel persecutions in some places, under the reign of Severus. The most famous of the martyrs who then suffered were Perpetua and her companions, who belonged to the same country with Tertullian, and perhaps to his own city, Carthage. Perpetua was a young married lady, and had a little baby only a few weeks old. Her father was a heathen, but she herself had been converted, and was a catechumen—which was the name given to converts who had not yet been baptized, but where in a course of catechising, or training for baptism. When Perpetua had been put into prison, her father went to see her, in the hope that he might persuade her to give up her faith. "Father," she said, "you see this vessel standing here; can you call it by any other than its right name?" He answered, "No." "Neither," said Perpetua, "can I call myself anything else than what I am—a Christian." On hearing this, her father flew at her in such anger that it seemed as if he would tear out her eyes; but she stood so quietly that he could not bring himself to hurt her; and he went away and did not come again for some time.
In the meanwhile Perpetua and some of her companions were baptized; and at her baptism she prayed for grace to bear whatever sufferings might be in store for her. The prison in which she and the others were shut up was a horrible dungeon, where Perpetua suffered much from the darkness, the crowded state of the place, the heat and closeness of the air, and the rude behaviour of the guards. But most of all she was distressed about her poor little child, who was separated from her, and was pining away. Some kind Christians, however, gave money to the keepers of the prison, and got leave for Perpetua and her friends to spend some hours of the day in a lighter part of the building, where her child was brought to see her. And after a while she took him to be always with her, and then she felt as cheerful as if she had been in a palace.
The martyrs were comforted by dreams, which served to give them courage and strength to bear their sufferings, by showing them visions of blessedness which was to follow. When the day was fixed for their trial, Perpetua's father went again to see her. He begged her to take pity on his old age, to remember all his kindness to her, and how he had loved her best of all his children. He implored her to think of her mother and her brothers, and of the disgrace which would fall on all the family if she were to be put to death as an evil-doer. The poor old man shed a flood of tears; he humbled himself before her, kissing her hands, throwing himself at her feet, and calling her Lady instead of Daughter. But, although Perpetua was grieved to the heart, she could only say, "God's pleasure will be done on us. We are not in our own power, but in His!"
One day, as the prisoners were at dinner, they were suddenly hurried off to their trial. The market-place, where the judge was sitting, was crowded with people, and when Perpetua was brought forward, her father crept as close to her as he could, holding out her child, and said, "Take pity on your infant." The judge himself entreated her to pity the little one and the old man, and to sacrifice; but, painful as the trial was, she steadily declared that she was a Christian, and that she could not worship false gods. At these words, her father burst out into such loud cries that the judge ordered him to be put down from the place where he was standing, and to be beaten with rods. Perhaps the judge did not mean so much to punish the old man for being noisy as to try whether the sight of his suffering might not move his daughter; but, although Perpetua felt every blow as if it had been laid upon herself, she knew that she must not give way. She was condemned, with her companions, to be exposed to wild beasts; and, after she had been taken back to prison, her father visited her once more. He seemed as if beside himself with grief; he tore his white beard, he cursed his old age, and spoke in a way that might have moved a heart of stone. But still Perpetua could only be sorry for him; she could not give up her Saviour.
The prisoners were kept for some time after their condemnation, that they might be put to death at some great games which were to be held on the birthday of one of the emperor's sons; and during this confinement their behaviour had a great effect on many who saw it. The gaoler himself was converted by it, and so were others who had gone to gaze at them. At length the appointed day came, and the martyrs were led into the amphitheatre. The men were torn by leopards and bears; Perpetua and a young woman named Felicitas, who had been a slave, were put into nets and thrown before a furious cow, who tossed them and gored them cruelly: and when this was over, Perpetua seemed as if she had not felt it, but were awaking from a trance, and she asked when the cow was to come. She then helped Felicitas to rise from the ground, and spoke words of comfort and encouragement to others. When the people in the amphitheatre had seen as much as they wished of the wild beasts, they called out that the prisoners should be killed. Perpetua and the rest then took leave of each other, and walked with cheerful looks and firm steps into the middle of the amphitheatre, where men with swords fell on them and dispatched them. The executioner who was to kill Perpetua was a youth, and was so nervous that he stabbed her in a place where the hurt was not deadly; but she herself took hold of his sword, and showed him where to give her the death-wound.
CHAPTER VII.
ORIGEN.
A.D. 185-254.
The same persecution in which Perpetua and her companions suffered at Carthage raged also at Alexandria in Egypt, where a learned man named Leonides was one of the martyrs (A.D. 202). Leonides had a son named Origen, whom he had brought up very carefully, and had taught to get some part of the Bible by heart every day. And Origen was very eager to learn, and was so good and so clever that his father was afraid to show how fond and how proud he was of him, lest the boy should become forward and conceited. So when Origen asked questions of a kind which few boys would have thought of asking, his father used to check him; but when he was asleep Leonides would steal to his bedside and kiss him, thanking God for having given him such a child, and praying that Origen might always be kept in the right way.
When the persecution began, Origen, who was then about seventeen years old, wished that he might be allowed to die for his faith; but his mother hid his clothes, and so obliged him to stay at home; and all that he could do was to write to his father in prison, and to beg that he would not fear lest the widow and orphans should be left destitute, but would be steadfast in his faith, and would trust in God to provide for their relief.
The persecutors were not content with killing Leonides, but seized on all his property, so that the widow was left in great distress, with seven children, of whom Origen was the eldest. A Christian lady kindly took Origen into her house; and after a time, young as he was, he was made master of the Catechetical School, a sort of college, where the young Christians of Alexandria were instructed in religion and learning. The persecution had slackened for a while, but it began again, and some of Origen's pupils were martyred. He went with them to their trial, and stood by them in their sufferings; but although he was ill-used by the mob of Alexandria, he was himself allowed to go free.
Origen had read in the Gospel, "Freely ye have received, freely give" (St. Matt. x. 8), and he thought that therefore he ought to teach for nothing. In order, therefore, that he might be able to do this, he sold a quantity of books which he had written out, and lived for a long time on the price of them, allowing himself only about fivepence a day. His food was of the poorest kind; he had but one coat, through which he felt the cold of winter severely; he sat up the greater part of the night, and then lay down on the bare floor. When he grew older, he came to understand that he had been mistaken in some of his notions as to these things, and to regret that, by treating himself so hardly, he had hurt his health beyond repair. But still, mistaken as he was, we must honour him for going through so bravely with what he took to be his duty.
He soon grew so famous as a teacher, that even Jews, heathens, and heretics went to hear him; and many of them were so led on by him that they were converted to the Gospel. He travelled a great deal: some of his journeys were taken because he had been invited into foreign countries that he might teach the Gospel to people who were desirous of instruction in it, or that he might settle disputes about religion. And he was invited to go on a visit to the mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus, who was himself friendly to Christianity, although not a Christian. Origen, too, wrote a great number of books in explanation of the Bible, and on other religious subjects; and he worked for no less than eight-and-twenty years at a great book, called the Hexapla, which was meant to show how the Old Testament ought to be read in Hebrew and in Greek.
But, although he was a very good, as well as a very learned man, Origen fell into some strange opinions, from wishing to clear away some of those difficulties which, as St. Paul says, made the Gospel seem "foolishness" to the heathen philosophers (1 Cor. i. 23). Besides this, Demetrius, the bishop of Alexandria, although he had been his friend, had some reasons for not wishing to ordain him to be one of the clergy; and when Origen had been ordained a presbyter (or priest) in the Holy Land, where he was on a visit, Demetrius was very angry. He said that no man ought to be ordained in any church but that of his own home; and he brought up stories about some rash things which Origen had done in his youth, and questions about the strange doctrines which he held. Origen, finding that he could not hope for peace at Alexandria, went back to his friend the bishop of Cæsarea, by whom he had been ordained, and he spent many years at Cæsarea, where he was more sought after as a teacher than ever. At one time he was driven into Cappadocia, by the persecution of a savage emperor named Maximin, who had murdered the gentle Alexander Severus; but he returned to Cæsarea, and lived there until another persecution began under the Emperor Decius.
This was by far the worst persecution that had yet been known. It was the first which was carried on throughout the whole empire, and no regard was now paid to the old laws which Trajan and other emperors had made for the protection of the Christians. They were sought out, and were made to appear in the market-place of every town, where they were required by the magistrates to sacrifice, and, if they refused, were sentenced to severe punishment. The emperor wished most to get at the bishops and clergy; for he thought that, if the teachers were put out of the way, the people would soon give up the Gospel. Although many martyrs were put to death at this time, the persecutors did not so much wish to kill the Christians, as to make them disown their religion; and, in the hope of this, many of them were starved, and tortured, and sent into banishment in strange countries, among wild people who had never before heard of Christ. But here the emperor's plans were notably disappointed; for the banished bishops and clergy had thus an opportunity of making the Gospel known to those poor wild tribes, whom it might not have reached for a long time if the Church had been left in quiet.
We shall hear more about the persecution in the next chapter. Here I shall only say that Origen was imprisoned and cruelly tortured. He was by this time nearly seventy years old, and was weak in body from the labours which he had gone through in study, and from having hurt his health by hard and scanty living in his youth; so that he was ill able to bear the pains of the torture, and, although he did not die under it, he died of its effects soon after (A.D. 254).
Decius himself was killed in battle (A.D. 251), and his persecution came to an end. And when it was over, the faithful understood that it had been of great use, not only by helping to spread the Gospel, in the way which has been mentioned, but in purifying the Church, and in rousing Christians from the carelessness into which too many of them had fallen during the long time of ease and quiet which they had before enjoyed. For the trials which God sends on His people in this world are like the chastisements of a loving Father; and, if we accept them rightly, they will all be found to turn out to our good.
CHAPTER VIII.
ST. CYPRIAN.
PART I. A.D. 200-253.
About the same time with Origen lived St Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. He was born about the year 200, and had been long famous as a professor of heathen learning, when he was converted at the age of forty-five. He then gave up his calling as a teacher, and, like the first Christians at Jerusalem (Acts iv. 34-5), he sold a fine house and gardens, which he had near the town, and gave the price, with a large part of his other money, to the poor. He became one of the clergy of Carthage, and when the bishop died, about three years after, Cyprian was so much loved and respected that he was chosen in his place (A.D. 248).
Cyprian tried with all his power to do the duties of a good bishop, and to get rid of many wrong things which had grown upon his Church during the long peace which it had enjoyed. But about two years after he was made bishop, the persecution under Decius broke out, when, as was said in the last chapter, the persecutors tried especially to strike at the bishops and clergy, and to force them to deny their faith. Now Cyprian would have been ready and glad to die, if it would have served the good of his people; but he remembered how our Lord had said, "When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another" (St. Matt. x. 23), and how He Himself withdrew from the rage of His enemies, because His "hour was not yet come" (St. John viii. 20, 59; xi. 54). And it seemed to the good bishop, that for the present it would be best to go out of the way of his persecutors. But he kept a constant watch over all that was done in his church, and he often wrote to his clergy and people from the place where he was hidden.
But in the meanwhile, things went on badly at Carthage. Many had called themselves Christians in the late quiet times who would not have done so if there had been any danger about it. And now, when the danger came, numbers of them ran into the market-place at Carthage, and seemed quite eager to offer sacrifice to the gods of the heathen. Others, who did not sacrifice, bribed some officers of the Government to give them tickets, certifying that they had sacrificed; and yet they contrived to persuade themselves that they had done nothing wrong by their cowardice and deceit! There were, too, some mischievous men among the clergy, who had not wished Cyprian to be bishop, and had borne him a grudge ever since he was chosen. And now these clergymen set on the people who had lapsed (or fallen) in the persecution, to demand that they should be taken back into the Church, and to say that some martyrs had given them letters which entitled them to be admitted at once.
In those days it was usual, when any Christian was known to have been guilty of a heavy sin, that (as is said in our Commination service), he should be "put to open penance" by the Church; that is, that he should be required to show his repentance publicly. Persons who were in this state were not allowed to receive the holy sacrament of the Lord's Supper, as all other Christians then did very often. The worst sinners were obliged to stand outside the church-door, where they begged those who were going in to pray that their sins might be forgiven; and those of the penitents who were let into the church had places in it separate from other Christians. Sometimes penance lasted for years; and always until the penitents had done enough to prove that they were truly grieved for their sins, so that the clergy might hope that they were received to God's mercy for their Redeemer's sake. But as it was counted a great and glorious thing to die for the truth of Christ, and martyrs were highly honoured in the Church, penitents had been in the habit of going to them while they were in prison awaiting death, and of entreating the martyrs to plead with the Church for the shortening of the appointed penance. And it had been usual, out of regard for the holy martyrs, to forgive those to whom they had given letters desiring that the penitents might be gently treated. But now these people at Carthage, instead of showing themselves humble, as true penitents would have been, came forward in an insolent manner, as if they had a right to claim that they might be restored to the Church; and the martyrs' letters (or rather what they called martyrs' letters) were used in a way very different from anything that had ever been allowed. Cyprian had a great deal of trouble with them; but he dealt wisely in the matter, and at length had the comfort of settling it. But, as people are always ready to find fault in one way or another, some blamed him for being too strict with the lapsed, and others for being too easy; and each of these parties went so far as to set up a bishop of its own against him. After a time, however, he got the better of these enemies, although the straiter sect (who were called Novatianists, after Novatian, a presbyter of Rome) lasted for three hundred years or more.
Shortly after the end of the persecution, a terrible plague passed through the empire, and carried off vast numbers of people. Many of the heathen thought that the plague was sent by their gods to punish them for allowing the Christians to live; and the mobs of towns broke out against the Christians, killing some of them, and hurting them in other ways.
But instead of returning evil for evil, the Christians showed what a spirit of love they had learnt from their Lord and Master; and there was no place where this was more remarkably shown than at Carthage. The heathen there were so terrified by the plague that they seemed to have lost all natural feeling, and almost to be out of their senses. When their friends fell sick, they left them to die without any care; when they were dead, they cast out their bodies into the street; and the corpses which lay about unburied were not only shocking to look at, but made the air unwholesome, so that there was much more danger of the plague than before. But while the heathen were behaving in this way, and each of them thought only of himself, Cyprian called the Christians of Carthage together, and told them that they were bound to do very differently. "It would be no wonder," he said, "if we were to attend to our own friends; but Christ our Lord charges us to do good to heathens and publicans also, and to love our enemies. HE prayed for them that persecuted Him, and if we are His disciples, we ought to do so too." And then the good bishop went on to tell his people what part each of them should take in the charitable work. Those who had money were to give it, and were to do such acts of kindness as they could besides. The poor, who had no silver or gold to spare, were to give their labour in a spirit of love. So all classes set to their tasks gladly, and they nursed the sick and buried the dead, without asking whether they were Christian or heathens.
When the heathens saw these acts of love, many of them were brought to wonder what it could be that made the Christians do them; and how they came to be so kind to poor and old people, to widows, and orphans, and slaves; and how it was that they were always ready to raise money for buying the freedom of captives, or for helping their brethren who were in any kind of trouble. And from wondering and asking what it was that led Christians to do such things, which they themselves would never have thought of doing, many of the heathen were brought to see that the Gospel was the true religion, and they forsook their idols to follow Christ.
After this, Cyprian had a disagreement with Stephen, bishop of Rome. Rome was the greatest city in the whole world, and the capital of the empire. There were many Christians there even in the time of the Apostles, and, as years went on, the church of Rome grew more and more, so that it was the greatest, and richest, and most important church of all. Now the bishops who were at the head of this great church were naturally reckoned the foremost of all bishops, and had more power than any other; so that if a proud man got the bishopric of Rome, it was too likely that he might try to set himself up above his brethren, and to lay down the law to them. Stephen was, unhappily, a man of this kind, and he gave way to the temptation, and tried to lord it over other bishops and their churches. But Cyprian held out against him, and made him understand that the bishop of Rome had no right to give laws to other bishops, or to meddle with the churches of other countries. He showed that, although St. Peter (from whom Stephen pretended that the bishops of Rome had received power over others) was the first of the Apostles, he was not of a higher class or order than the rest; and, therefore, that, although the Roman bishops stood first, the other bishops were their equals, and had received an equal share in the Christian ministry. So Stephen was not able to get the power which he wished for over other churches, and, after his death, Carthage and Rome were at peace again.
About six years after the death of the Emperor Decius, a fresh persecution arose under another emperor, named Valerian (A.D. 257). He began by ordering that the Christians should not be allowed to meet for worship, and that the bishops and clergy should be separated from their flocks. Cyprian was carried before the governor of Africa; and, on being questioned by him, he said, "I am a Christian and a bishop. I know no other gods but the one true God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them. It is this God that we Christians serve; to Him we pray day and night, for ourselves and all mankind, and for the welfare of the emperors themselves." The governor asked him about his clergy. "Our laws," said Cyprian, "forbid them to throw themselves in your way, and I may not inform against them; but if they be sought after, they will be found, each at his post." The governor said that no Christians must meet for worship, under pain of death; and he sentenced Cyprian to be banished to a place called Curubis, about forty miles from Carthage. It was a pleasant abode, and Cyprian lived there a year, during which time he was often visited by his friends, and wrote many letters of advice and comfort to his brethren. And, as many of these were worse treated than himself, by being carried off into savage places, or set to work underground in mines, he did all that he could to relieve their distress, by sending them money and other presents.
At the end of the year, the bishop was carried back to Carthage, where a new governor had just arrived. The emperor had found that his first law against the Christians was of little use; so he now made a second law, which was much more severe. It ordered that bishops and clergy should be put to death; that such Christians as were persons of worldly rank should lose all that they had, and be banished or killed; but it said nothing about the poorer Christians who do not seem to have been in any danger. Cyprian thought that his time was now come; and when his friends entreated him to save himself by flight, he refused. He was carried off to the governor's country house, about six miles from Carthage, where he was treated with much respect, and was allowed to have some friends with him at supper. Great numbers of his people, on hearing that he was seized, went from Carthage to the place where he was, and watched all night outside the house in fear lest their bishop should be put to death, or carried off into banishment without their knowledge. Next morning Cyprian was led to the place of judgment, which was a little way from the governor's palace. He was heated with the walk, under a burning sun; and, as he was waiting for the governor's arrival, a soldier of the guard, who had once been a Christian, kindly offered him some change of clothes. "Why," said the bishop, "should we trouble ourselves to remedy evils which will probably come to an end to-day?"
The governor took his seat, and required Cyprian to sacrifice to the gods. He refused; and the governor then desired him to consider his safety. "In so righteous a cause," answered the bishop, "there is no need of consideration;" and, on hearing the sentence, which condemned him to be beheaded, he exclaimed, "Praise be to God!" A cry arose from the Christians, "Let us go and be beheaded with him!" He was then led by soldiers to the place of execution. Many of his people climbed up into the trees which surrounded it, that they might see the last of their good bishop. After having prayed, he took off his upper clothing; he gave some money to the executioner, and as it was necessary that he should be blindfolded before suffering, he tied the bandage over his own eyes. Two of his friends then bound his hands, and the Christians placed cloths and handkerchiefs around him, that they might catch some of his blood. And thus St. Cyprian was martyred, in the year 258.
Valerian's attempts against the Gospel were all in vain. The Church had been purified and strengthened by the persecution under Decius, so that there were now very few who fell away for fear of death. The faith was spread by the banished bishops, in the same way as it had been in the last persecution[1]; and, as has ever been found, "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church."
NOTES
CHAPTER IX.
FROM GALLIENUS TO THE END OF THE LAST PERSECUTION.
A.D. 261-313.
Valerian, who had treated the Christians so cruelly, came to a miserable end. He led his army into Persia, where he was defeated and taken prisoner. He was kept for some time in captivity; and we are told that he used to be led forth, loaded with chains, but with the purple robes of an emperor thrown over him, that the Persians might mock at his misfortunes. And when he had died from the effects of shame and grief, it is said that his skin was stuffed with straw, and was kept in a temple, as a remembrance of the triumph which the Persians had gained over the Romans, whose pride had never been so humbled before.
When Valerian was taken prisoner, his son Gallienus became emperor (A.D. 261). Gallienus sent forth a law by which the Christians, for the first time, got the liberty of serving God without the risk of being persecuted. We might think him a good emperor for making such a law; but he really does not deserve much credit for it, since he seems to have made it merely because he did not care much either for his own religion, or for any other.
And now there is hardly anything to be said of the next forty years, except that the Christians enjoyed peace and prosperity. Instead of being obliged to hold their services in the upper rooms of houses, or in burial-places under ground, and in the dead of night, they built splendid churches, which they furnished with gold and silver plate, and with other costly ornaments. Christians were appointed to high offices, such as the government of countries; and many of them held places in the emperor's palace. And, now that there was no danger or loss to be risked by being Christians, multitudes of people joined the Church who would have kept at a distance from it if there had been anything to fear. But, unhappily, the Christians did not make a good use of all their prosperity. Many of them grew worldly and careless, and had little of the Christian about them except the name; and they quarrelled and disputed among themselves, as if they were no better than mere heathens. But it pleased God to punish them severely for their faults; for at length there came such a persecution as had never before been known.
At this time there were no fewer than four emperors at once; for Diocletian, who became emperor in the year 284, afterwards took in Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius, to share his power, and to help him in the labour of government. Galerius and Constantius, however, were not quite so high, and had not such full authority, as the other two. Galerius married Diocletian's daughter, and it was supposed that both this lady and the empress, her mother, were Christians. The priests and others, whose interest it was to keep up the old heathenism, began to be afraid lest the empresses should make Christians of their husbands; and they sought how this might be prevented.
Now the heathens had some ways by which they used to try to find out the will of their gods. Sometimes they offered sacrifices of beasts, and, when the beasts were killed, they cut them open, and judged from the appearance of the inside, whether the gods were well pleased or angry. And at certain places there were what they called oracles, where people who wished to know the will of the gods went through some ceremonies, and expected a voice to come from this or that god in answer to them. Sure enough, the voice very often did come, although it was not really from any god, but was managed by the juggling of the priests. And the answers which these voices gave were often contrived very cunningly, that they might have more than one meaning, so that, however things might turn out, the oracle was sure to come true. And now the priests set to frighten Diocletian with tricks of this kinds. When he sacrificed, the insides of the victims (as the beasts offered in sacrifice were called) were said to look in such a way as to show that the gods were angry. When he consulted the oracles, answers were given declaring that, so long as Christians were allowed to live on the earth, the gods would be displeased. And thus Diocletian, although at first he had been inclined to let them alone, became terrified, and was ready to persecute.
The first order against the Christians was a proclamation requiring that all soldiers, and all persons who held any office under the emperor, should sacrifice to the heathen gods (A.D. 298). And five years after this, Galerius, who was a cruel man, and very bitter against the Christians (although his wife was supposed to be one), persuaded Diocletian to begin a persecution in earnest.
Diocletian did not usually live at Rome, like the earlier emperors, but at Nicomedia, a town in Asia Minor, on the shore of the Propontis (now called the Sea of Marmora). And there the persecution began, by his sending forth an order that all who would not serve the gods of Rome should lose their offices; that their property should be seized, and, if they were persons of rank, they should lose their rank. Christians were no longer allowed to meet for worship; their churches were to be destroyed, and their holy books were to be sought out and burnt (Feb. 24, 303). As soon as this proclamation was set forth, a Christian tore it down, and broke into loud reproaches against the emperors. Such violent acts and words were not becoming in a follower of Him, "who, when he was reviled, reviled not again, and when he suffered, threatened not" (1 Peter ii. 23). But the man who had forgotten himself so far, showed the strength of his principles in the patience with which he bore the punishment of what he had done, for he was roasted alive at a slow fire, and did not even utter a groan.
This was in February, 303; and before the end of that year, Diocletian put forth three more proclamations against the Christians. One of them ordered that the Christian teachers should be imprisoned; and very soon the prisons were filled with bishops and clergy, while the evil-doers who were usually confined in them were turned loose. The next proclamation ordered that the prisoners should either sacrifice or be tortured; and the fourth directed that not only the bishops and clergy, but all Christians, should be required to sacrifice, on pain of torture.
These cruel laws were put in execution. Churches were pulled down, beginning with the great church of Nicomedia, which was built on a height, and overlooked the emperor's palace. All the Bibles and service-books that could be found, and a great number of other Christian writings, were thrown into the flames; and many Christians, who refused to give up their holy books, were put to death. The plate of churches was carried off, and was turned to profane uses, as the vessels of the Jewish temple had formerly been by Belshazzar.
The sufferings of the Christians were frightful, but after what has been already said of such things, I shall not shock you by telling you much about them here. Some were thrown to wild beasts; some were burnt alive, or roasted on gridirons; some had their skins pulled off, or their flesh scraped from their bones; some were crucified; some were tied to branches of trees, which had been bent so as to meet, and then they were torn to pieces by the starting asunder of the branches. Thousands of them perished by one horrible death or other, so that the heathens themselves grew tired and disgusted with inflicting or seeing their sufferings; and at length, instead of putting them to death, they sent them to work in mines, or plucked out one of their eyes, or lamed one of their hands or feet, or set bishops to look after horses or camels, or to do other work unfit for persons of their venerable character. And it is impossible to think what miseries even those who escaped must have undergone; for the persecution lasted ten years, and they had not only to witness the sufferings of their own dear relations, or friends, or teachers, but knew that the like might, at any hour, come on themselves.
It was in the East that the persecution was hottest and lasted longest; for in Europe it was not much felt after the first two years. The Emperor Constantius, who ruled over Gaul (now called France), Spain and Britain, was kind to the Christians; and after his death, his son Constantine was still more favourable to them. There were several changes among the other emperors, and the Christians felt them for better or for worse, according to the character of each emperor; but it is needless to speak much of them in a little book like this. Galerius went on in his cruelty until, at the end of eight years, he found that it had been of no use towards putting down the Gospel, and that he was sinking under a fearful disease, something like that of which Herod, who had killed St. James, died (Acts xii. 23). He then thought with grief and horror of what he had done, and (perhaps in the hope of getting some relief from the God of Christians) he sent forth a proclamation allowing them to rebuild their churches, and to hold their worship, and begging them to remember him in their prayers. Soon after this he died (A.D. 311).
The cruellest of all the persecutors was Maximin, who, from the year 305, had possession of Asia Minor, Syria, the Holy Land, and Egypt. When Galerius made his law in favour of the Christians, Maximin for a while pretended to give them the same kind of liberty in his dominions. But he soon changed again, and required that all his subjects should sacrifice—even that little babies should take some grains of incense into their hands, and should burn it in honour of the heathen gods; and when a season of great plenty followed after this, Maximin boasted that it was a sign of the favour with which the gods received his law. But it very soon appeared how false his boast was, for famine and plague began to rage throughout his dominions. The Christians, of course, had their share in the distress; but instead of triumphing over their persecutors, they showed the true spirit of the Gospel by treating them with kindness, by relieving the poor, by tending the sick, and by burying the dead, who had been abandoned by their own nearest relations.
Although there is no room to give any particular account of the martyrs here, there is one of them who especially deserves to be remembered, because he was the first who suffered in our own island. This good man, Alban, while he was yet a heathen, fell in with a poor Christian priest, who was trying to hide himself from the persecutors. Alban took him into his own house, and sheltered him there; and he was so much struck with observing how the priest prayed to God, and spent long hours of the night in religious exercises, that he soon became a believer in Christ. But the priest was hotly searched for, and information was given that he was hidden in Alban's house. And when the soldiers came to look for him there, Alban knew their errand, and put on the priest's dress, so that the soldiers seized him and carried him before the judge. The judge found that they had brought the wrong man, and, in his rage at the disappointment, he told Alban that he must himself endure the punishment which had been meant for the other. Alban heard this without any fear, and on being questioned, he declared that he was a Christian, a worshipper of the one true God, and that he would not sacrifice to idols which could do no good. He was put to the torture, but bore it gladly for his Saviour's sake, and then, as he was still firm in professing his faith, the judge gave orders that he should be beheaded. And when he had been led out to the place of execution, which was a little grassy knoll that rose gently on one side of the town, the soldier, who was to have put him to death, was so moved by the sight of Alban's behaviour, that he threw away his sword, and desired to be put to death with him. They were both beheaded, and the town of Verulam, where they suffered, has since been called St. Alban's, from the name of the first British martyr.
This martyrdom took place early in the persecution; but, (as we have seen,) Constantius afterwards protected the British Christians, and his son Constantine, who succeeded to his share in the empire, treated them with yet greater favour. In the year 312, Constantine marched against Maxentius, who had usurped the government of Italy and Africa. Constantine seems to have been brought up by his father to believe in one God, although he did not at all know who this God was, nor how He had revealed Himself in Holy Scripture. But as he was on his way to fight Maxentius, he saw in the sky a wonderful appearance, which seemed like the figure of a cross, with words around it—"By this conquer." He then caused the cross to be put on the standards (or colours) of his army; and when he had defeated Maxentius, he set up at Rome a statue of himself, with a cross in its right hand, and with an inscription which declared that he owed his victory to that saving sign. About the same time that Constantine overcame Maxentius, Licinius put down Maximin in the East. The two conquerors now had possession of the whole empire; and they joined in publishing laws by which Christians were allowed to worship God freely according to their conscience (A.D. 313).
CHAPTER X.
CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
A.D. 313-337.
It was a great thing for the Church that the emperor of Rome should give it liberty; and Constantine, after sending forth the laws which put an end to the persecution, went on to make other laws in favour of the Christians. But he did not himself become a Christian all at once, although he built many churches, and gave rich presents to others, and although he was fond of keeping company with bishops, and of conversing with them about religion. Licinius, the emperor of the East, who had joined with Constantine in his first laws, afterwards quarrelled with him, and persecuted the eastern Christians cruelly. But Constantine defeated him in battle (A.D. 324), and the whole empire was once more united under one head.
After his victory over Licinius, Constantine declared himself a Christian, which he had not done before; and he used to attend the services of the Church very regularly, and to stand all the time that the bishops were preaching, however long their sermons might be. He used even himself to write a kind of discourses something like sermons, and to read them aloud in the palace to all his court; but he really knew very little of Christian doctrine, although he was very fond of taking part in disputes about it. And, although he professed to be a Christian, he had not yet been made a member of Christ by baptism; for, in those days, people had so high a notion of the grace of baptism, that many of them put off their baptism until they supposed that they were on their death-bed, for fear lest they should sin after being baptized, and so should lose the benefit of the sacrament. This was of course wrong; for it was a sad mistake to think that they might go on in sin so long as they were not baptized. God, we know, might have cut them off at any moment in the midst of all their sins; and even if they were spared, there was a great danger that, when they came to beg for baptism at last, they might not have that true spirit of repentance and faith without which they could not be fit to receive the grace of the sacrament. And therefore the teachers of the Church used to warn people against putting off their baptism out of a love for sin; and when any one had received clinical baptism, as it was called (that is to say, baptism on a sick-bed), if he afterwards got well again, he was thought but little of in the Church.
But to come back to Constantine. He had many other faults besides his unwillingness to take on himself the duties of a baptized Christian; and, although we are bound to thank God for having turned his heart to favour the Church, we must not be blind to the emperor's faults. Yet, with all these faults, he really believed the Gospel, and meant to do what he could for the truth.
It took a long time to put down heathenism; for it would not have been safe or wise to force people to become Christians before they had come to see the falsehood of their old religion. Constantine, therefore, only made laws against some of its worst practices, and forbade any sacrifices to be offered in the name of the empire; but he did not hinder the heathens from sacrificing on their own account if they liked.
Soon after professing himself a Christian, the emperor began to build a new capital in the East. There had been a town called Byzantium on the spot before; but the new city was far grander, and he gave it the name of Constantinople, which means the City of Constantine. It was meant to be altogether Christian,—unlike Rome, which was full of temples of heathen gods. And the emperors, from this time, usually lived at Constantinople, or at some other place in the East.
There will be more to say about Constantine in the next chapter. In the mean time, let us look at the progress of the Gospel.
It had, by this time, made its way into many countries beyond the bounds of the empire. There were Christians in Scotland and in India; there had long been great numbers of Christians in Persia and Arabia. Many of the Goths, who then lived about the Danube, had been converted by captives whom they carried off in their plundering expeditions, during the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus (about A.D. 260); and other roving tribes had been converted by the same means. About the end of the third century, Gregory, who is called the Enlightener, had gone as a missionary bishop into Armenia, where he persuaded the king, Tiridates, to receive the Gospel, and to establish it as the religion of his country; so that Armenia had the honour of being the first Christian kingdom. The Georgians were converted in the reign of Constantine; and about the same time, the Ethiopians or Abyssinians (who live to the south of Egypt) were brought to the knowledge of the truth in a very remarkable way.
There was a rich Christian of Tyre, named Meropius, who was a philosopher, and wished to make discoveries in the countries towards India, which were then but little known. So he set out in a ship of his own, sailed down the Red Sea, and made a voyage to the East. On his way back, he and his crew landed at a place on the coast of Ethiopia, in search of fresh water, when the people of the country fell on them, and killed all but two youths named Ædesius and Frumentius, who were relations of Meropius. These lads were taken to the king's court, where, as they were better educated than the Ethiopians, they soon got into great favour and power. The king died after a time, leaving a little boy to succeed him; and the two strangers were asked to carry on the government of the country until the prince should be old enough to take it into his own hands. They did this faithfully, and stayed many years in Ethiopia; and they used to look out for any Christian sailors or merchants who visited the country, and to hold meetings with such strangers and others for worship, although they were distressed that they had no clergy to minister to them. At length the young prince grew up to manhood, and was able to govern his kingdom for himself; and then Ædesius and Frumentius set out for their own country, which they had been longing to see for so many years. Ædesius got back to Tyre, where he became a deacon of the Church. But Frumentius stopped at Alexandria, and told his tale to the bishop, the great St. Athanasius (of whom we shall hear more by-and-by); and he begged that a bishop might be sent into Ethiopia to settle and govern the Church there. Athanasius, considering how faithful and wise Frumentius had shown himself in all his business, how greatly he was respected and loved by the Ethiopians, and how much he had done to spread the gospel in the land of his captivity, said that no one was so fit as he to be bishop; and he consecrated Frumentius accordingly. To this day the chief bishop of the Abyssinian Church, instead of being chosen from among the clergy of the country, is always a person sent by the Egyptian bishop of Alexandria; and thus the Abyssinians still keep up the remembrance of the way in which their Church was founded, although the bishopric of Alexandria is now sadly fallen from the height at which it stood in the days of Athanasius and Frumentius.
Constantine used his influence with the king of Persia, whose name was Sapor, to obtain good treatment for the Christians of that country; and the Gospel continued to make progress there. But this naturally raised the jealousy of the magi, who were the priests of the heathen religion of Persia, and they looked out for some means of doing mischief to the Christians. So a few years after the death of Constantine, when a war broke out between Sapor and the next emperor, Constantius, these magi got about the king, and told him that his Christian subjects would be ready to betray him to the Romans, from whom they had got their religion. Sapor then issued orders that all Christians should pay an enormous tax, unless they would worship the gods of the Persians. Their chief bishop, whose name was Symeon, on receiving this order, answered that the tax was more than they could pay, and that they worshipped the true God alone, who had made the sun, which the Persians ignorantly adored.
Sapor then sent forth a second order, that the bishops, priests, and deacons of the Christians should be put to death, that their churches should be destroyed, and that the plate and ornaments of the churches should be taken for profane uses; and he sent for Symeon, who was soon brought before him. The bishop had been used to make obeisance to the king, after the fashion of the country; but on coming into his presence now, he refused to do so, lest it should be taken as a sign of that reverence which he was resolved to give to God alone. Sapor then required him to worship the sun, and told him that by doing so he might deliver himself and his people. But the bishop answered, that if he had refused to do reverence to the king, much more must he refuse such honour to the sun, which was a thing without reason or life. On this, the king ordered that he should be thrown into prison until next day.
As he was on his way to prison, Symeon passed an old and faithful servant of the king, named Uthazanes, who had brought up Sapor from a child, and stood high in his favour. Uthazanes, seeing the bishop led away in chains, fell on his knee and saluted him in the Persian fashion. But Symeon turned away his head, and would not look at him; for Uthazanes had been a Christian, and had lately denied the faith. The old man's conscience was smitten by this, and he burst out into lamentation—"If my old and familiar friend disowns me thus, what may I expect from my God whom I have denied!" His words were heard, and he was carried before the king, who tried to move him both by threats and by kindness. But Uthazanes stood firm against everything, and, as he could not be shaken in his faith, he was sentenced to be beheaded. He then begged the king, for the sake of the love which had long been between them, to grant him the favour that it might be proclaimed why he died—that he was not guilty of any treason, but was put to death only for being a Christian. Sapor was very willing to allow this, because he thought that it would frighten others into worshipping his gods. But it turned out as Uthazanes had hoped; for when it was seen how he loved his faith better than life itself, other Christians were encouraged to suffer, and even some heathens were brought over to the Gospel. Bishop Symeon was put to death after having seen a hundred of his clergy suffer before his eyes; and the persecution was renewed from time to time throughout the remainder of Sapor's long reign.
CHAPTER XI.
THE COUNCIL OF NICÆA.
A.D. 325.
We might expect to find that, when the persecutions by the heathen were at an end within the Roman empire, Christians lived together in peace and love, according to their Lord's commandment; but it is a sad truth that they now began to be very much divided by quarrels among themselves. There had, indeed, been many false teachers in earlier times; but now, when the emperor had become a Christian, the troubles caused by such persons reached much further than before. The emperors took part in them, and made laws about them, and the whole empire was stirred by them.
Constantine was, as I have said,[2] very fond of taking a part in Church matters, without knowing much about them. Very soon after the first law by which he gave liberty to the Christians, he was called in to settle a quarrel which had been raised in Africa by the followers of one Donatus, who separated from the Church and set up bishops of their own, because they said that the bishops of Carthage and some others had not behaved rightly when the persecutors required them to deliver up the Scriptures. I will tell you more about these Donatists (as they are called) by-and-by,[3] and I mention them now only because it was they who first invited the emperor to judge in a dispute about religion.
When Constantine put down Licinius and got possession of the East (as has been said), he found that a dispute of a different kind from the quarrel of the Donatists was raging there. One Arius, a presbyter (or priest) of Alexandria, had begun some years before this time to deny that our blessed Lord was God from everlasting. Arius was a crafty man, and did all that he could to make his opinion look as well as possible; but, try as he might, he was obliged to own that he believed our Lord to be a creature. And the difference between the highest of created beings and God, the maker of all creatures, is infinite; so that it mattered little how Arius might smooth over his shocking opinion, so long as he did not allow our Lord to be truly God from all eternity.
The bishop of Alexandria, whose name was Alexander, excommunicated Arius for his impiety; that is to say, he solemnly turned him out of the Church, so that no faithful Christian should have anything to do with him in religious matters. Thus Arius was obliged to leave Egypt, and he lived for a while at Nicomedia, with a bishop who was an old friend of his. And while he was there, he made a set of songs to be sung at meals, and others for travellers, sailors, and the like. He hoped that people would learn these songs, without considering what mischief was in them; and that so his heresy would be spread.
When Constantine first heard of these troubles, he tried to quiet them by advising Alexander and Arius not to dispute about trifles. But he soon found that this would not do, and that the question whether our Lord and Saviour were God or a creature was so far from being a trifle, that it was one of the most serious of all questions. In order, therefore, to get this and some other matters settled, he gave orders for a general council to meet. Councils of bishops within a certain district had long been common. In many countries they were regularly held once or twice a year; and, besides these regular meetings, others were sometimes called together to consider any business which was particularly pressing. Some of these councils were very great; for instance, the bishop of Alexander could call together the bishops of all Egypt, and the bishop of Antioch could call together all the bishops of Syria and some neighbouring countries. But there was no bishop who could call a council of the whole Church, because there was no one who had any power over more than a part of it. But now, Constantine, as he had become a Christian, thought that he might gather a council from all quarters of his empire, and this was the first of what are called the general councils.
It met in the year 325, at Nicæa (or Nice), in Bithynia, and 318 bishops attended it. A number of clergy and other persons were also present; even some heathen philosophers went, out of curiosity to see what the Christians were to do. Many of the bishops were very homely and simple men, who had not much learning; but their great business was only to say plainly what their belief had always been, so that it might be known whether the doctrines of Arius agreed with this or no; and thus the good bishops might do their part very well, although they were not persons of any great learning or cleverness. One of these simpler bishops was drawn into talk by a philosopher, who tried to puzzle him about the truth of the Gospel. The bishop was not used to argue or to dispute much, and might have been no match for the philosopher in that way; but he contented himself with saying his Creed; and the philosopher was so struck with this, that he took to thinking more seriously of Christianity than he had ever thought before, and he ended in becoming a Christian himself.
There was a great deal of arguing about Arius and his opinions, and the chief person who spoke against him was Athanasius, a clergyman of Alexandria, who had come with the bishop, Alexander. Athanasius could not sit as a judge in the council, because he was not a bishop; but he was allowed to speak in the presence of the bishops, and pointed out to them the errors which Arius tried to hide. So at last Arius was condemned, and the emperor banished him, with some of his chief followers. And, in order to set forth the true Christian faith beyond all doubt, the council made that creed which is read in the Communion-service in our churches—all but some of the last part of it, which was made at a later time, as we shall see. It is called the Nicene Creed, from the name of the place where the council met; and the great point in it is, that it declares our blessed Lord to be "Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance (that is to say, of the same nature) with the Father." For this truth, that our Lord has the same nature with the Almighty Father—this truth that He is really God from everlasting—was what the Arians could not be brought to own.
The emperor attended the council during the latter part of its sittings; and a story is told of him and a bishop named Acesius, who belonged to the sect of Novatianists. You will remember that this sect broke off from the Church in St. Cyprian's days, because Novatian and others thought that St. Cyprian and the Church were too easy with those who repented after having sacrificed in time of persecution[4]; and, from having begun thus, it came to be hard in its notions as to the treatment of all sorts of penitents. But, as it had been only about the treatment of persons who had behaved weakly in persecution that the Novatianists at first differed from the Church, and as persecution by the heathens was now at an end, Constantine hoped that, perhaps, they might be persuaded to return to the Church; so he invited some bishops of the sect to attend the council, and Acesius among them. When the creed had been made, Acesius declared that it was all true, and that it was the same faith which he had always believed; and he was quite satisfied with the rules which the council made as to the time of keeping Easter, and as to some other things. "Why, then," asked Constantine, "will you not join the Church?" Acesius said, that he did not think the Church strict enough in dealing with penitents. "Take a ladder, then," said the emperor, "and go up to heaven by yourself!"
NOTES
[ [3]See Chapter XXI., Parts [III.], [IV.], and [V.]
CHAPTER XII.
ST. ATHANASIUS.
PART I. A.D. 325-337.
Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria by whom Arius had been excommunicated, died soon after returning home from the Council of Nicæa; and Athanasius, who was then about thirty years of age, was chosen in his stead, and governed the Alexandrian church for six-and-forty years. Every one knows the name of St. Athanasius, from the creed which is called after it. That creed, indeed, was not made by St. Athanasius himself; but, as the Prayer-book says, it is "commonly called" his, because it sets forth the true Christian faith, of which he was the chief defender in his day. And we are bound to honour this learned and holy bishop, as the man by whom especially God was pleased that His truth should be upheld and established against all the craft of Arius and his party, and even against all the power of the emperors of Rome.
For, although Arius had been sent into banishment, he soon managed to get into favour at the emperor's court. One of his friends, a priest, gained the ear of Constantine's sister; and this princess, when she was dying, recommended the priest to the emperor. Neither Constantine nor his sister understood enough of the matter to be on their guard against the deceits of the Arian, who was able to persuade the emperor that Arius had been ill-used, and that he did not really hold the opinions for which the council had condemned him. Arius, then, was allowed to return from banishment, and Constantine desired Athanasius to receive him back into the Church, saying that he was not guilty of the errors which had been laid to his charge. But Athanasius knew that this was only a trick; and he answered that, as Arius had been condemned by a council of the whole Church, he could not be restored by anything less than another such council.
The Arians, on finding that they could not win Athanasius over, resolved to attack him. They contrived that all sorts of charges against him should be carried to the emperor; and in the year 335, a council was held at Tyre for his trial. One story was, that he had killed an Egyptian bishop, named Arsenius, that he had cut off his hand, and had used it for magical purposes (for among other things, Athanasius was said by his enemies to be a sorcerer!); and the dried hand of a man was shown, which was said to be that of Arsenius. But when the time came for examining this charge, what was the confusion of the accusers at seeing Arsenius himself brought into the council! He was dressed in a long cloak, and Athanasius lifted it up, first on one side, and then on the other, so as to show that the man was not only alive, but had both his hands safe and sound. The leaders of the Arians had known that Arsenius was not dead, but they had hoped that he would not appear. But, happily for Athanasius, one of his friends had discovered Arsenius, and had kept him hidden until the right moment came for producing him.
Athanasius was able to answer the other charges against him, as well as that about Arsenius; and the Arians, seeing that they must contrive some new accusation, sent some of his bitterest enemies into Egypt, to rake up all the tales that they could find. Athanasius knew what he might expect from people who could act so unfairly; he therefore resolved not to wait for their return, but got on board a ship which was bound for Constantinople. On arriving there, he posted himself in a spot outside the city, where he expected the emperor to pass in returning from a ride; and when Constantine came up, he threw himself in his way. The emperor was startled; but Athanasius told him who he was, and entreated him, by the thought of that judgment in which princes as well as subjects must one day appear, to order that the case should be tried before himself, instead of leaving it to judges from whom no justice was to be looked for. The emperor agreed to this, and was very angry with those who had behaved so unjustly in the council at Tyre. But after a time some of the Arians got about him and told him another story—that Athanasius had threatened to stop the sailing of the fleet which carried corn from Alexandria to Constantinople. This was a charge which touched Constantine very closely; because Constantinople depended very much on the Egyptian corn for food, and he thought that the bishop, who had so much power at Alexandria, might perhaps be able to stop the fleet, and to starve the people of the capital, if he pleased. And, whether the emperor believed the story, or whether he wished to shelter Athanasius for a while from his persecutors by putting him out of the way—he sent him into banishment at Treves, on the banks of the Moselle, in a part of Gaul which is now reckoned to belong to Germany. Except for the separation from his flock, this banishment would have been no great hardship for Athanasius; for he was treated with great respect by the bishop of Treves, and by the emperor's eldest son, who lived there, and all good men honoured him for his stedfastness in upholding the true faith.
But, although Athanasius was removed, the Alexandrian Church would not admit Arius. So, after a while, the emperor resolved to have him admitted at Constantinople, and a council of bishops agreed that it should be so. The bishop of Constantinople, whose name was Alexander, and who was almost a hundred years old, was grievously distressed at this; he desired his people to entreat God, with fasting and prayer, that it might not come to pass, and he threw himself under the altar, and prayed very earnestly that the evil which was threatened might be somehow turned away, or that, at least, he himself might not live to see it.
At length, on the evening before the day which had been fixed for receiving Arius into the Church, he was going through the streets of Constantinople, in high spirits, and talking with some friends of what was to take place on the morrow. But all at once he felt himself ill, and went into a house which was near; and in a few minutes he was dead! His death, taking place at such a time and in such a way, made a great impression, and people were ready enough to look on it as a direct judgment of God on his impiety. But Athanasius, although he felt the awfulness of the unhappy man's sudden end, did not take it on himself to speak in this way; and we too shall do well not to pronounce judgment in such cases, remembering what our Lord said as to the Galileans who were slain by Pilate, and as to the men who were killed by the falling of the tower in Siloam (St. Luke xiii. 1-5). While we abhor the errors of Arius, let us leave the judgment of him to God.
Although Constantine in his last years was very much in the hands of the Arians, we must not suppose that he meant to favour their heresy. For these people (as I have said already, and shall have occasion to say again) were very crafty, and took great pains to hide the worst of their opinions. They used words which sounded quite right, except to the few persons who, like Athanasius, were quick enough to understand what bad meanings might be disguised under these fair words. And whenever they wished to get one of the faithful bishops turned out, they took care not to attack him about his faith, but about some other things, as we have seen in the case of Athanasius. Thus they managed to blind the emperor, who did not know much about the matter, so that, while they were using him as a tool, and were persuading him to help them with all his power, he all the while fancied that he was firmly maintaining the Nicene faith.
Constantine, after all that he had done in religious disputes, was still unbaptized. Perhaps he was a catechumen, which (as has been explained before),[5] was the name given to persons who were supposed to be in a course of training for baptism; but it is not certain that he was even so much as a catechumen. At last, shortly after the death of Arius, the emperor felt himself very sick, and believed that his end was near. He sent for some bishops, and told them that he had put off his baptism because he had wished to receive it in the river Jordan, like our Lord Himself; but as God had not granted him this, he begged that they would baptize him. He was baptized accordingly, and during the remaining days of his life he refused to wear any other robes than the white dress which used then to be put on at baptism, by way of signifying the cleansing of the soul from sin. And thus the first Christian emperor died, at a palace near Nicomedia, on Whitsunday in the year 337.
At Constantine's death, the empire was divided between his three sons. The eldest of them, whose name was the same with his father's, and the youngest, Constans, were friendly to the true faith. But the second son, Constantius, was won over by the Arians; and as, through the death of his brothers, he got possession of the whole empire within a few years, his connexion with that party led to great mischief. All through his reign, there were unceasing disputes about religion. Councils were almost continually sitting in one place or another, and bishops were posting about to one of them after another at the emperor's expense. Constantius did not mean ill; but he went even further than his father in meddling with things which he did not understand.
The Arians went on in the same cunning way as before. I may mention, by way of example, the behaviour of Leontius, bishop of Antioch. The Catholics[6] (that is to say, those who held the faith which the Church throughout all the world held), used to sing in church, as we do—"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;" but the Arians sang, "Glory be to the Father, by the Son, in the Holy Ghost"—for they did not allow the Second and Third Persons to be of the same nature with the First. Leontius, then, who was an Arian, and yet did not wish people to know exactly what he was, used to mumble his words, so that nobody could make them out, until he came to the part in which all parties agreed; and then he sang out loudly and clearly—"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." He was an old man, and sometimes he would point to his white hair, and say, "When this snow melts, there will be a great deal of mud," meaning that after his death the two parties would come to open quarrels, which he had tried to prevent during his lifetime by such crafty behaviour as that which has just been mentioned.
The three young emperors met shortly after their father's death. It was agreed between them that Athanasius should be allowed to return to Alexandria; and for this favour he was chiefly indebted to young Constantine, who had known him during his banishment at Treves. The bishop returned accordingly, and was received with great rejoicing by his flock. But in about three years his enemies contrived that he should be again turned out (A.D. 341), and he was in banishment eight years. He was then restored again (A.D. 349); but his enemies watched their time, and spared no pains to get rid of him. One by one, they contrived to thrust out all the chief bishops who would have been inclined to take part with him; and at length, in the beginning of 356, Constantius sent a general named Syrianus to Alexandria, with orders to drive out Athanasius. The Alexandrians were so much attached to their great bishop that there was a fear lest they might prevent any open attempt against him. But Syrianus contrived to throw them off their guard; and one night, while Athanasius was keeping watch, with many of his clergy and people, in one of the churches (as the Christians of those days used to do before their great festivals and at other times), Syrianus suddenly beset the church with a great number of soldiers, and a multitude made up of Arians, Jews, and the heathen rabble of the city. When Athanasius heard the noise outside the church, he sat down calmly on his throne, and desired the congregation to chant the hundred and thirty-sixth psalm, in which God's deliverances of His people in old times are celebrated; and the whole congregation joined in the last part of every verse—"For His mercy endureth for ever." The doors were shut, but the soldiers forced them open and rushed in; and it was a fearful sight to see their drawn swords and their armour flashing by the lamplight in the house of God. As they advanced up the church, many of the congregation were trodden down or crushed to death, or pierced through with their darts. Athanasius stood calm in the midst of all the terrible din. His clergy, when they saw the soldiers pushing on towards the sanctuary (as the part of the church was called which was railed off for the clergy), entreated him to save himself by flight; but he declared that he would not go until his people were safe, and waited until most of them had made their escape through doors in the upper part of the church. At last, when the soldiers were pressing very close to the sanctuary, the clergy closed round their bishop, and hurried him away by a secret passage. And when they had got him out of the church, they found that he had fainted; for although his courage was high, his body was weak and delicate, and the dreadful scene had overcome him. But he escaped to the deserts of Egypt, where he lived in peace among the monks for six years, until the death of Constantius. His enemies thought that he might, perhaps, seek a refuge in Ethiopia; and Constantius wrote to beg that the princes of that country would not shelter him, and that the bishop, Frumentius,[7] might be sent to receive instruction in the faith from the Arian bishop who was put into the see of Alexandria. But Athanasius was safe elsewhere, and Frumentius wisely stayed at home.
The new Arian bishop of Alexandria was a Cappadocian named George. He was a coarse, ignorant, and violent man, and behaved with great cruelty to Athanasius's friends—even putting many of them to death. But Athanasius, from his quiet retreat, kept a watch over all that was done as to the affairs of the Church, both at Alexandria and elsewhere; and from time to time he wrote books, which reached places where he himself could not venture to appear. So that, although he was not seen during these years, he made himself felt, both to the confusion of the Arians, and to the comfort and encouragement of the faithful.
Constantius had no children, and after the death of Constans (A.D. 350), his nearest male relation was a cousin named Julian. The emperor gave his sister in marriage to this cousin, and also gave him the government of a part of the empire; but he always treated him with distrust and jealousy, so that Julian never loved him. And this was not the worst of it; for Julian, who had lost his father when he was very young, and had been brought up under the direction of Constantius, took a strong dislike to his cousin's religion, which was forced on him in a way that a lively boy could not well be expected to relish. He was obliged to spend a great part of his time in attending the services of the Church, and was even made a reader, (which was one of the lowest kinds of ministers in the Church of those times;) and, unfortunately, the end of all this was, that instead of being truly religious, he learnt to be a hypocrite. When he grew older, and was left more to himself, he fell into the hands of the heathen philosophers, who were very glad to get hold of a prince who might one day be emperor. So Julian's mind was poisoned with their opinions, and he gave up all belief in the Gospel, although he continued to profess himself a Christian for nine years longer. On account of his having thus forsaken the faith he is commonly called the Apostate.
At length, when Julian was at Paris, early in the year 361, Constantius sent him some orders which neither he nor his soldiers were disposed to obey. The soldiers lifted him up on a shield and proclaimed him emperor; and Julian set out at their head to fight for the throne. He marched boldly eastward, until he came to the Danube; then he embarked his troops and descended the great river for many hundreds of miles into the country which is now called Hungary. Constantius left Antioch, and was marching to meet Julian's army, when he was taken ill, and died at a little town in Cilicia. Like his father, he was baptized only a day or two before his death.
Julian now came into possession of the empire without further dispute; and he did all that he could to set heathenism up again. But in many parts of the empire, Christianity had taken such root that very few of the people held to the old religion, or wished to see it restored. Thus, we are told that once, when the emperor went to a famous temple near Antioch, on a great heathen festival, in the hope of finding things carried on as they had been before Constantine's time, only one old priest was to be seen; and, instead of the costly sacrifices which had been offered in the former days of heathenism, the poor old man had nothing better than a single goose to offer.
Julian knew that in past times Christians had always been ready to suffer for their faith, and that the patience of the martyrs had always led to the increase of the Church. He did not think it wise, therefore, to go to work in the same way as the earlier persecuting emperors; but he contrived to annoy the Christians very much by other means, and sometimes great cruelties were committed against them under his authority. Yet, with all this, he pretended to allow them the exercise of their religion, and he gave leave to those who had been banished by Constantius to return, home,—not that he really meant to do them any kindness, but because he hoped that they would all fall to quarrelling among themselves, and that he should be able to take advantage of their quarrels. But in this hope he was happily disappointed; for they had learnt wisdom by suffering, and were disposed to make peace with each other as much as possible, while they were all threatened by the enemies of the Saviour's very name.
The first thing that the heathens of Alexandria did when they heard of the death of Constantius had been to kill the Arian bishop, George; for he had behaved in such a way that the heathens hated him even more than the Catholics did. Another Arian bishop was set up in his place; but when Julian had given leave for the banished to return, Athanasius came back, and the Arian was turned out.
The Alexandrians received Athanasius with great joy, and he did all that was in his power to reconcile the parties of Christians among themselves. For, although no one could be more earnest than he in maintaining every particle of the faith necessary for a true Christian, he was careful not to insist on things which were not necessary. He knew, too, that people who really meant alike were often divided from each other by not understanding one another's words; and he was always ready to make allowance for them as far as he could do so without giving up the truth. But Julian was afraid to let him remain at Alexandria, and was greatly provoked at hearing that he had converted and baptized some heathen ladies of rank. So the emperor wrote to the Alexandrians, telling them that, although they might choose another bishop for themselves, they must not let Athanasius remain among them, and banishing the bishop from all Egypt. Athanasius, when he heard of this, said to his friends, "Let us withdraw; this is but a little cloud which will soon pass over;" and he set off up the river Nile in a boat. After a while, another boat was seen in pursuit of him; but Athanasius then told his boatmen to turn round, and to sail down the river again; and when they met the other boat, from which they had not been seen until after turning, they answered the questions of its crew in such a way that they were allowed to pass without being suspected of having the bishop on board. Thus Athanasius got safe back to the city, and there he lay hid securely while his enemies were searching for him elsewhere. But after a little time he withdrew to the deserts, where he was welcomed and sheltered by his old friends the monks.
In his hatred of Christianity, Julian not only tried to restore heathenism, but showed favour to the Jews. He sent for some of them, and asked why they did not offer sacrifice as their law had ordered? They answered that it was not lawful to sacrifice except in the temple of Jerusalem, which was now in ruins, and did not belong to them, so that they could no longer fulfil the duty of sacrificing. Julian then gave them leave to build the temple up again, and the Jews came together in vast numbers from the different countries into which they had been scattered. Many of them had got great wealth in the lands of their banishment, and it is said that even the women laboured at the work, carrying earth in their rich silken dresses, and that tools of silver were used in the building. The Jews were full of triumph at the thought of being restored to their own land, and of reviving the greatness of David and Solomon. But it had been declared that the temple was to be overthrown, and that Jerusalem was to be "trodden down of the Gentiles," on account of the sin of God's ancient people (St. Luke xxi. 6, 24, &c.): so that this undertaking to rebuild the temple was nothing less than a daring defiance of Him who had so spoken; and it pleased Him to defeat it in a terrible manner. An earthquake scattered the foundations which had been laid; balls of fire burst forth from the ground, scorching and killing many of the workmen; their tools were melted by lightning; and stories are told of other fearful sights, which put an end to the attempt. Julian, indeed, meant to set about it once more, after returning from a war which he had undertaken against the Persians. But he never lived to do so. Athanasius was not mistaken when he said that his heathen emperor's tyranny would be only as a passing cloud; for Julian's reign lasted little more than a year and a half in all. He led his army into Persia in the spring of 363, and in June of that year he was killed in a skirmish by night.
Julian left no child to succeed him in the empire, and the army chose as his successor a Christian named Jovian, who soon undid all that Julian had done in matters of religion. The new emperor invited Athanasius to visit him at Antioch, and took his advice as to the restoration of the true faith. But Jovian's reign lasted only eight months, and Valentinian, who was then made emperor, gave the empire of the East to his brother Valens, who was a furious Arian, and treated the Catholics with great cruelty. We are told, for instance, that when eighty of their bishops had carried a petition to him, he put them on board a ship, and when it had got out to sea, the sailors, by his orders, set it on fire, and made their escape in boats, leaving the poor bishops to be burned to death.
Valens turned many orthodox bishops (that is to say, bishops of the right faith) out of their sees, and meant to turn out Athanasius, who hid himself for a while in his father's tomb. But the people of Alexandria begged earnestly that their bishop might be allowed to remain with them, and the emperor did not think it safe to deny their request, lest there should be some outbreak in the city. And thus, while the faith of which Athanasius had so long been the chief defender, and for the sake of which he had borne so much, was under persecution in all other parts of the eastern empire, the great bishop of Alexandria was allowed to spend his last years among his own flock without disturbance. He died in the year 373, at the age of seventy-six.
NOTES
[ [6]The word Catholic, which means Universal, is not to be confounded with Roman-Catholic.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MONKS.
In the story of St. Athanasius, monks have been more than once mentioned, and it is now time to give some account of these people and of their ways.
The word monk properly means one who leads a lonely life; and the name was given to persons who professed to withdraw from the world and its business that they might give themselves up to serve God in religious thoughts and exercises. Among the Jews there had been whole classes of people who practised this sort of retirement: some, called Essenes, lived near the Dead Sea; and others, called Therapeutæ, in Egypt, where a great number of Jews had settled. Among the heathens of the East, too, a like manner of living had been common for ages, as it still continues to be; and many of them carry it to an excessive strictness, as we are told by travellers who have visited India, Thibet, and other countries of Asia.
Nothing of the kind, however, is commanded for Christians in the New Testament; and when Scripture warrant for the monkish life was sought for, the great patterns who were produced were Elijah and St. John the Baptist—the one of them an Old Testament prophet; the other, a holy man who lived, indeed, in the days when our Lord Himself was on the earth, but who was not allowed to enter into His Church, or to see it fully established by the coming of the Holy Ghost at the day of Pentecost. But still it was very natural that the notion of a life of strict poverty, retirement from the world, and employment in spiritual things, should find favour with Christians, as a means of fulfilling the duties of their holy calling; and so it seems that some of them took to this way of life very early. But the first who is named as a hermit (that is to say, a dweller in the wilderness) was Paul, a young man of Alexandria, who, in the year 251, fled from the persecution of Decius into the Egyptian desert, where he is said to have lived ninety years. Paul, although he afterwards became very famous, spent his days without being known, until, just before his death, he was visited by another great hermit, St. Antony. But Antony himself was a person of great note and importance in his own lifetime.
He was born in the district of Thebes, in Egypt, in the very same year that Paul withdrew from the world. While a boy, he was thoughtful and serious. His parents died before he had reached the age of twenty, and left him considerable wealth. One day, when in church, he was struck by hearing the story of the rich young man who was charged to sell all that he had, give to the poor, and follow our Lord (St. Luke xviii. 18-22). At another time he was moved by hearing the charge to "take no thought for the morrow" (St. Matt. vi. 34). And in order to obey these commands (as he thought), Antony parted with all that belonged to him, bade farewell to his only sister, and left his home, with the intention of living in loneliness and devotion. He carried on this life for many years, and several times changed his abode, that he might seek out some place still wilder and more remote than the last. But he grew so famous that people flocked even into the depths of the wilderness to see him. A number of disciples gathered around him, and hermits or monks began to copy his way of life in other parts of Egypt. Antony's influence became very great; he made peace between enemies, comforted mourners, and gave advice to all who asked him as to spiritual concerns; and when he took the part of any oppressed person who applied to him, his interference was always successful. Affairs of this kind sometimes obliged him to leave his cell (as the dwellings of the monks were called); but he always returned as soon as possible, for he used to say that "a monk out of his solitude is like a fish out of water." Even the emperors, Constantine and his sons, wrote to him with great respect, and asked him to visit their courts. He thanked them, but did not accept their invitation; and he wrote more than once to them in favour of St. Athanasius, whom he steadily supported in his troubles on account of the faith. On two great occasions he visited Alexandria, for the purpose of strengthening his brethren in their sufferings for the truth. The first of these visits was while the last heathen persecution, under Maximin, was raging.[8] Antony stood by the martyrs at their trials and in their death, and took all opportunities of declaring himself a Christian; but the persecutors did not venture to touch him: and, after waiting till the heat of the danger was past, he again withdrew to the wilderness. The second visit was in the time of the Arian disturbances, when his appearance had even a greater effect than before. The Catholics were encouraged by his exhortations, and a great number of conversions took place in consequence. Antony died, at the age of a hundred and five, in the year 356, a few days before the great bishop of Alexandria was driven to seek a refuge in the desert.[9]
Antony, as we have seen, was a hermit, living in the wilderness by himself. But by-and-by other kinds of monks were established, who lived in companies together. Sometimes they were lodged in clusters of little cells, each of them having his separate cell, or two or three living together; sometimes the cells were all in one large building, called a monastery. The head of each monastery, or of each cluster of cells, was called abbot, which means father. And in some cases there were many monasteries belonging to one order, so that they were all considered as one society, and there was one chief abbot over all. Thus the order founded by Pachomius, on an island in the Nile, soon spread, so that before his death it had eight monasteries, with three thousand monks among them; and about fifty years later, it had no fewer than fifty thousand monks.
These monks of Pachomius lived in cells, each of which contained three. Each cluster of cells had its abbot; the head of the order, who was called the archimandrite (which means chief of a sheep-fold), went round occasionally to visit all the societies which were under him; and the whole order met every year at the chief monastery, for the festival of Easter, and a second time in the month of August. The monks of St. Pachomius prayed many times a-day. They fasted every Wednesday and Friday, and communicated every Sunday and Saturday. They took their meals together and sang psalms before each. They were not allowed to talk at table, but sat with their hoods drawn over their faces, so that no one could see his neighbours, or anything but the food before him. Their dress was coarse and plain; the chief article of it was a rough goat-skin, in imitation of the prophet Elijah. They slept with their clothes on, not in beds, but in chairs, which were of such a shape as to keep them almost standing. They spent their time not only in prayers and other religious exercises, but in various kinds of simple work, such as labouring in the fields, weaving baskets, ropes, and nets, or making shoes. They had boats in which they sent the produce of their labour down the Nile to Alexandria; and the money which they got by selling it was not only enough to keep them, but enabled them to redeem captives, and to do such other acts of charity.
This account of the monks of St. Pachomius will give some notion of the monkish life in general, although one order differed from another in various ways. All that the monks had was considered to belong to them in common, after the pattern of the first Christians, as was supposed (Acts ii. 34; iv. 32); and no one was allowed to have anything of his own. Thus we are told that when a monk was found at his death to have left a hundred pieces of silver, which he had earned by weaving flax, his brethren, who were about three thousand in number, met to consider what should be done with the money. Some were for giving it to the Church; some, to the poor. But the fathers of the society quoted St. Peter's words to Simon the sorcerer, "Thy money perish with thee" (Acts viii. 20); and on the strength of this text (which in truth had not much to do with the matter), they ordered that it should be buried with its late owner. St. Jerome, who tells the story, says that this was not done out of any wish to condemn the dead monk, but in order that others might be deterred from hoarding.
These different kinds of monks were first established in various parts of Egypt; but their way of life was soon taken up in other countries; and societies of women, who were called nuns (that is to say mothers), were formed under the same kind of rules.
One thing which had much to do with making monkish life so common was, that when persecution by the heathen was at an end, many Christians felt the want of something which might assure them that they were separate from the world, as Christ's true people ought to be. It was no longer enough that they should call themselves Christians; for the world had come to call itself Christian too. Perhaps we may think that it would have been better if those who wished to live religiously had tried to go on doing their duty in the world, and to improve it by the example and the influence of holy and charitable lives, instead of running away from it. And they were certainly much mistaken if they fancied that by hiding themselves in the desert they were likely to escape temptation. For temptations followed them into their retreats, and we have only too many proofs, in the accounts of famous monks, that the effect of this mistake was often very sad indeed. And we may be sure that if the good men who in those days were active in recommending the life of monks had been able to foresee how things would turn out, they would have been much more cautious in what they said of it.
It was not every one who was fit for such a life, and many took it up without rightly considering whether they were fit for it. The kind of work which was provided for them was not enough to occupy them thoroughly, and many of them suffered grievously from temptations to which their idleness laid them open. It was supposed, indeed, that they might find the thoughts of heavenly things enough to fill their minds; and, when a philosopher asked Antony how he could live without books, he answered that for him the whole creation was a book, always at hand, in which he could read God's word whenever he pleased. But it was not every one who could find such delight in that great book; and many of the monks, for want of employment, were tormented by all sorts of evil thoughts, nay, some of them were even driven into madness by their way of life.
The monks ran into very strange mistakes as to their duty towards their kindred. Even Antony himself, although he was free from many of the faults of spiritual pride and the like, which became too common among his followers, thought himself bound to overcome his love for his young sister. And, as another sample of the way in which monks were expected to deaden their natural affections, I may tell you how his disciple Pior behaved. Pior, when a youth, left his father's house, and vowed that he would never again look on any of his relations—which was surely a very rash and foolish and wrong vow. He went into the desert, and had lived there fifty years, when his sister heard that he was still alive. She was too infirm to go in search of him, but she contrived that the abbot, under whose authority he was, should order him to pay her a visit. Pior went accordingly, and, when he had reached her house, he stood in front of it, and sent to tell her that he was there. The poor old woman made all haste to get to him; her heart was full of love and delight at the thoughts of seeing her brother again after so long a separation. But as soon as Pior heard the door opening, he shut his eyes, and he kept them shut all through the meeting. He refused to go into his sister's house, and when he had let her see him for a short time in this way, without showing her any token of kindness, he hurried back to the desert.
In later times monks were usually ordained as clergy of the Church. But at first it was not intended that they should be so, and in each monastery there were only so many clergy as were needed for the performance of Divine service and other works of the ministry. And in those early days, many monks had a great fear of being ordained clergymen or bishops, because they thought that the active business in which bishops and other clergy were obliged to engage, would hinder their reaching to the higher degrees of holiness. Thus a famous monk, named Ammonius, on being chosen for a bishopric, cut off one of his ears, thinking that this blemish would prevent his being made a priest, as it would have done under the law of Moses (Lev. xxi. 17-23); and when he was told that it was not so in the Christian Church, he threatened to cut out his tongue.
It was not long before the sight of the great respect which was paid to the monks led many worthless people to call themselves monks for the sake of what they might get by doing so. These fellows used to go about, wearing heavy chains, uncouthly dressed, and behaving roughly; and they told outrageous stories of visions and of fights with devils which they pretended to have had. By such tricks they got large sums of money from people who were foolish enough to encourage them; and they spent it in the most shameful ways.
But besides these vile hypocrites, many monks who seem to have been sincere enough ran into very strange extravagances. There was one kind of them called Grazers, who used to live among mountains, without any roof to shelter them, browsing, like beasts, on grass and herbs, and by degrees growing much more like beasts than men. And in the beginning of the fifth century, one Symeon founded a new sort of monks, who were called Stylites (that is to say, pillar saints), from a Greek word, which means a pillar. Symeon was a Syrian, and lived on the top of one pillar after another for seven-and-thirty years. Each pillar was higher than the one before it; the height of the last of them was forty cubits (or seventy feet), and the top of it was only a yard across. There Symeon was to be seen, with a heavy iron chain round his neck, and great numbers of people flocked to visit him; some of them even went all the way from our own country. And when he was dead, a monk, named Daniel, got the old cowl which he had worn, and built himself a pillar near Constantinople, where he lived three-and-thirty years. The high winds sometimes almost blew him from his place, and sometimes he was covered for days with snow and ice, until the emperor Leo made him submit to let a shed be built round the top of his pillar. The fame and influence which these monks gained were immense. They were supposed to have the power of prophecy and of miracles; they were consulted even by emperors and kings, in the most important matters; and sometimes, on great occasions, when a stylite descended from his pillar, or some famous hermit left his cell, and appeared among the crowds of a city, he was able to make everything bend to his will.
We must not be blind to the serious errors of monkery; but we are bound also to own that God was pleased to make it the means of great good. The monks did much for the conversion of the heathen, and when the ages of darkness came on, after the overthrow of the Roman empire in the West, they rendered inestimable service in preserving the knowledge of learning and religion, which, but for them, might have utterly perished from the earth.
NOTES
CHAPTER XIV.
ST. BASIL AND ST. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUM. COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
PART I. A.D. 373-381.
Although St. Athanasius was now dead, God did not fail to raise up champions for the true faith. Three of the most famous of these were natives of Cappadocia—namely, Basil, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and his friend Gregory of Nazianzum. But although Gregory of Nyssa was a very good and learned man, and did great service to the truth by his writings, there was nothing remarkable in the story of his life; so I shall only tell you about the other two.
Basil and Gregory of Nazianzum were both born about the year 329. Basil was of a noble Christian family. Gregory's father had belonged to a strange sect called Hypsistarians, whose religion was a mixture of Jewish and heathen notions; but he had been converted from it by his wife, Nonna, who was a very pious and excellent woman, and, before his son's birth, he had risen to be bishop of Nazianzum.
The two youths became acquainted at school in Cappadocia, and, when they were afterwards sent to the famous schools of Athens, they grew into the closest friendship. They lived and read and walked together: Gregory says that they had all things common, and that it was as if they had only one soul in two bodies. Athens was an excellent place for learning all that the wise men of this world could teach, and therefore students flocked to it from distant countries. But it was a dangerous place for Christian young men; for the teachers were heathen philosophers, and knew well how to entangle them in arguments, so that many of the pupils, who did not rightly understand the grounds of their faith, were deceived into giving it up. Thus, at the very time when Basil and Gregory were at Athens, Julian was also there, sucking in the heathen notions which led to so much evil when he afterwards became emperor. But the two Cappadocians kept themselves clear from all the snares of "philosophy and vain deceit" (Coloss. ii. 8); and although they were the foremost of all the students in Athens for learning, and might have hoped to make a great figure in the world by their talents, they resolved to give up all worldly ambition, and to devote themselves to the ministry of the Church.
So they were both ordained to be clergymen, and their friendship continued as warm as ever. Gregory did many kind offices to Basil, and at length, when the archbishopric of Cæsarea, the chief city of Cappadocia, fell vacant, Gregory had a great share in getting his friend chosen to it. Basil was now in a very high office, with many bishops under him; and he had become noted as one of the chief defenders of the Catholic faith. And when the emperor Valens set up Arianism in all other parts of his dominions, Basil remained at his post, and kept the Church of Cæsarea free from the heresy. Valens came into Cappadocia, and was angry that, while his wishes were obeyed everywhere else, Basil should hold out against them: so he sent an officer named Modestus to Cæsarea, and ordered him to require the archbishop to submit, on pain of being turned out. Modestus told Basil his errand, and threatened him with loss of his property, torture, banishment, and even death, in case of his refusal. But Basil was not at all daunted. "Think of some other threat," he said, "for these have no influence on me. As for loss of property, I run no risk, for I have nothing to lose except these mean garments and a few books. Nor does a Christian care for banishment, since he has no home upon earth, but makes every country his own; or rather, he looks on the whole world as God's, and on himself as God's pilgrim upon earth. Neither can tortures harm me, for my body is so weak that the first blow would kill me; and death would be a gain, for it would but send me the sooner to Him for whom I live and labour, and to whom I have long been journeying."
Modestus returned to his master with an account of what had been said, and Valens himself soon after came to Cæsarea. But when he went to the cathedral on the festival of the Epiphany, and saw Basil at the head of his clergy, and witnessed their solemn service, he was struck with awe. He wished to make an offering, as the custom was, but none of the clergy went to receive his gift, and he almost fainted at the thought of being thus rejected from the Church, as if he had no part or lot in it. He afterwards sent for Basil, and had some conversation with him; and the end of the affair was, that he not only left Basil in possession of his see, but bestowed a valuable estate on a hospital which the archbishop had lately founded.
While Basil had risen, by Gregory's help, to be an archbishop, Gregory himself was still a presbyter. He would not have taken even this office but that his father ordained him to it almost by force; and he had a great dread of being raised to the high and difficult office of a bishop. But Basil, for certain reasons, wished to establish a bishop in a little town called Sasima, and he fixed on his old friend, without, perhaps, thinking so much as he ought to have thought, whether the place and the man were likely to suit each other. The old bishop of Nazianzum did all that he could to overcome his son's unwillingness, and Gregory was consecrated; but he thought himself unkindly used, and complained much of Basil's behaviour in the matter.
After a time, Basil and other leaders of the orthodox (that is, of those who held the right faith) urged Gregory to undertake a mission to Constantinople, and he agreed to go, in the hope of being able to do some good (A.D. 378). The bishopric of that great city had been in the hands of Arians for nearly forty years, and although there were many people of other sects there, the orthodox were but a handful. Gregory, when he began his labours, found that there was a strong feeling against him and his doctrine. He could not get the use of any church, and was obliged to hold his service in a friend's house. He was often attacked by the Arian mob; he was stoned; he was carried before the magistrates on charges of disturbing the peace; the house which he had turned into a chapel was broken into by night, and shocking outrages were committed in it. But the good Gregory held on notwithstanding all this, and, after a while, his mild and grave character, his eloquent and instructive preaching, and the piety of his life, wrought a great change, so that his little place of worship became far too small to hold the crowds which flocked to it. While Gregory was thus employed, Basil died, in the year 380.
Both parts of the empire were now again under orthodox princes. Valens had lost his life in war, without leaving any children (A.D. 378), so that Valentinian's sons, Gratian and Valentinian the Second, were heirs to the whole. But Gratian felt the burden of government too much for himself, a lad of nineteen, and for his little brother, who was but seven years old; and he gave up the East to a brave Spaniard, named Theodosius, in the hope that he would be able to defend it.
Theodosius came to Constantinople in the year 380, and found things in the state which has just been described. He turned the Arian bishop and his clergy out of the churches, and gave Gregory possession of the cathedral. Gregory knew that the emperor wished to help the cause of the true faith, and he did as Theodosius wished; but he was very sad and uneasy at being thus thrust on a flock of which the greater part as yet refused to own him.
Theodosius then called a council, which met at Constantinople in the year 381, and is reckoned as the second General Council (the Council of Nicæa[10] having been the first). One act of this council was to add to the Nicene Creed some words about the Holy Ghost, by way of guarding against the errors of a party who were called Macedonians, after one Macedonius, who had been bishop of Constantinople; for these people denied the true doctrine as to the Holy Ghost, although they had given up the errors of Arius as to the Godhead of our blessed Lord.
But afterwards, some of the bishops who attended the council fell to disputing about the choice of a bishop for Antioch; and Gregory, who tried to persuade them to agree, found that, instead of heeding his advice, they all fell on him; and they behaved so shamefully to him that he gave up his bishopric, which, indeed, he had before wished to do. Theodosius was very sorry to lose so good a man from that important place; but Gregory was glad to get away from its troubles and anxieties to the quiet life which he best loved. He took charge of the diocese of Nazianzum (which had been vacant since his father's death, some year's before), until a regular bishop was appointed to it; and he spent his last days in retirement, soothing himself with religious poetry and music. One of the holiest men of our own Church, Bishop Ken (the author of the Morning and Evening Hymns), used often to compare himself with St. Gregory of Nazianzum; for Bishop Ken, too, was driven from his bishopric in troubled times, and, in the poverty, sickness, and sorrow of his last years, he, too, used to find relief in playing on his lute, and in writing hymns and other devout poems.
Theodosius was resolved to establish the right faith, according as the council had laid it down. But it seems that at one time some of the bishops were afraid lest an Arian, named Eunomius, should get an influence over his mind, and should persuade him to favour the Arians. And there is a curious story of the way in which one of these bishops, who was a homely old man, from some retired little town, tried to show the emperor that he ought not to encourage heretics. On a day when a number of bishops went to pay their respects at court, this old man, after having saluted the emperor very respectfully, turned to his eldest son, the young emperor Arcadius, and stroked his head as if he had been any common boy. Theodosius was very angry at this behaviour, and ordered that the bishop should be turned out. But as the officers of the palace were hurrying him towards the door, the old man addressed the emperor, and told him that as he was angry on account of the slight offered to the prince, even so would the Heavenly Father be offended with those who should refuse to His Son the honours which they paid to Himself. Theodosius was much struck by this speech; he begged the bishop's forgiveness, and showed his regard for the admonition by keeping Eunomius and the rest of the Arians at a distance.
The emperor then made some severe laws, forbidding all sorts of sects to hold their worship, and requiring them to join the Catholic Church. Now this was, no doubt, a great mistake; for it is impossible to force religious belief on people; and although Christian princes ought to support the true faith by making laws in favour of it, it is wrong to make men pretend a belief which they do not feel in their hearts. But Theodosius had not had the same opportunities which we have since had of seeing how useless such laws are, and what mischief they generally do; so that, instead of blaming him, we must give him credit for acting in the way which he believed most likely to promote the glory of God and the good of his subjects. And, although some of his laws seem very severe, there is reason to think that these were never acted on.
But about the same time, in another part of the empire, which had been usurped by one Maximus, an unhappy man, named Priscillian, and some of his companions, were put to death on account of heresy. Such things became sadly too common afterwards; but at the time the punishment of Priscillian struck all good men with horror. St. Martin, bishop of Tours, who was called "The Apostle of the Gauls," did all that he could to prevent it. St. Ambrose (of whom you will hear more in the next chapter) would not, on any account, have to do with the bishops who had been concerned in it; and the chief of these bishops was afterwards turned out of his see, and died in banishment. We may do well to remember that this first instance of punishing heresy with death, was under the government of an usurper, who had made his way to power by rebellion and murder.
NOTES
CHAPTER XV.
ST. AMBROSE.
A.D. 374-397.
The greatest bishop of the West in these times was St. Ambrose, of Milan. He was born about the year 340, and thus was ten or twelve years younger than St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nazianzum. His father had held a very high office under the emperors; Ambrose himself was brought up as a lawyer, and had risen to be governor of Liguria, a large country in the north of Italy, of which Milan was the chief city.
The bishop of Milan, who was an Arian, died in the year 374, and then a great dispute arose between the orthodox and the Arians as to choosing a new bishop, so that it seemed as if they might even come to blows about it. When both parties were assembled in the cathedral for the election, the governor, Ambrose, went and made them a speech, desiring them to manage their business peaceably; and it is said that, as soon as he had done, a little child's voice was heard crying out "Ambrose bishop!" All at once, the whole assembly caught up the words, which seemed to have something providential in them; and they insisted that the governor should be the new bishop. Now although Ambrose had been brought up as a Christian, he was still only a catechumen, and had never thought of being a bishop, or a clergyman of any kind; and he was afraid to undertake so high and holy an office. He therefore did all that he could to get himself excused. He tried to make the people of Milan think that his temper was too severe; but they saw through his attempts. He then escaped from the town more than once, but he was brought back. Valentinian, who was then emperor, approved the choice of a bishop; and Ambrose was first baptized, and a few days afterwards he was consecrated.
He now studied very hard, in order to make up for his want of preparation for his office. He was very active in all sorts of pious and charitable works, and he soon became famous as a preacher. His steady firmness in maintaining the orthodox faith was especially shown when Valentinian's widow, Justina, who was an Arian, wished to take one of the churches of Milan from the Catholics, and to give it to her own sect; and after a hard struggle, Ambrose got the better of her. He afterwards gained a very great influence both over Justina's son, Valentinian II., and over his elder brother Gratian. And when Gratian had been murdered by the friends of Maximus (the same Maximus who put Priscillian to death), and Theodosius came into the West to avenge his murder (A.D. 388), Ambrose had no less power with Theodosius than he had had with the younger emperors.
Theodosius took up his abode for a time at Milan after he had defeated and slain the usurper Maximus. Soon after his arrival in the city, he went to service at the cathedral, and was going to seat himself in the part of it nearest to the altar, as at Constantinople the emperor's seat was in that part of the church. But Ambrose stopped him, and told him that none but the clergy were allowed to sit there; and he begged the emperor to take a place at the head of the people outside the altar-rails. Theodosius was so far from being angry at this, that he thanked the bishop, and explained to him how it was that he had made the mistake of going within the rails; and when he got back to Constantinople, he astonished his courtiers by ordering that his seat should be removed to a place answering to that in which he had sat at Milan; for that, he said, was much more seemly and proper.
There are other stories about Ambrose's dealings with Theodosius; but I shall mention only one, which is the most famous of all. One day when there was to be a great chariot race at Thessalonica, it happened that a famous charioteer, who was a favourite with the people of the town, had been put in prison by the governor on account of a very serious crime. On this a mob went to the governor, and demanded that the man should be set at liberty. The governor refused; and thereupon the mob grew furious, and murdered him, with a number of his soldiers and other persons. The emperor might have been excused for showing heavy displeasure at this outrage; but unhappily the great fault of his character was a readiness to give way to violent fits of passion; and on hearing what had been done, his anger knew no bounds. Ambrose, who was afraid lest some serious mischief should follow, did all that he could to soothe the emperor, and got a promise from him that the Thessalonians should be spared. But some other advisers afterwards got about Theodosius, and again inflamed his mind against the offenders, so that he gave orders for a fearful act of cruel and treacherous vengeance. The people of Thessalonica were invited in the emperor's name to some games in the circus or amphitheatre, which was a building open to the sky, and large enough to hold many thousands. And when they were all gathered together in the place, instead of the amusement which had been promised them, they were fallen on by soldiers, who for three hours carried on a savage butchery; sparing neither old men, women, nor children, and making no difference between innocent and guilty, Thessalonian or stranger. Among those who had come to see the games there was a foreign merchant, who had had no concern in the outrage of the mob, which was punished in this frightful way. He had two sons with him, and he offered his own life, with all that he had, if the soldiers would but spare one of them. The soldiers were willing to agree to this, but the poor father could not make up his mind which of the sons he should choose; and the soldiers, who were too much enraged by their horrid work to make any allowance for his feelings, stabbed both the youths before his eyes at the same moment. The number of persons slain in the massacre is not certain: there were at least as many as seven thousand, and some writers say that there were fifteen thousand.
When Ambrose heard of this shocking affair, he was filled with grief and horror; for he had relied on the emperor's promise to spare the Thessalonians, and great care had been taken that he should not know anything of the orders which had been afterwards sent off. He wrote a letter to Theodosius, exhorting him to repent, and telling him that, unless he did so, he could not be admitted to the holy Communion. This letter brought the emperor to feel that he had done very wrongly; but Ambrose wished to make him feel it far more. As Theodosius was about to enter the cathedral, the bishop met him in the porch, and, laying hold on his robe, desired him to withdraw, because he was a man stained with innocent blood. The emperor said that he was deeply grieved for his offence; but Ambrose told him that this was not enough—that he must show some more public proofs of his repentance for so great a sin. The emperor withdrew accordingly to his palace, where he shut himself up for eight months, refusing to wear his imperial robes, and spending his time in sadness and penitence. At length, when Christmas was drawing near, he went to the bishop, and humbly begged that he might be admitted into the Church again. Ambrose desired him to give some substantial token of his sorrow, and the emperor agreed to make a law by which no sentence of death should be executed until thirty days after it had been passed. This law was meant to prevent any more such sad effects of sudden passion in princes as the massacre of Thessalonica. The emperor was then allowed to enter the church, where he fell down on the pavement, with every appearance of the deepest grief and humiliation; and it is said that from that time he never spent a day without remembering the crime into which his passion had betrayed him.
Theodosius was the last emperor who kept up the ancient glory of Rome. He is called "the Great," and in many respects was well deserving of the name. He died in 395, and St. Ambrose died within two years after, on Easter eve, in the year 397.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS.
A.D. 391.
In the account of Constantine, it was mentioned that the emperors after their conversion did not try to put down heathenism by force, or all at once.[11] For the wise teachers of the Church knew that this would not be the right way of going to work, but that it would be more likely to make the heathens obstinate, than to convert them. Thus St. Augustine (of whom I shall have more to tell you by-and-by) says in one of his sermons—"We must first endeavour to break the idols in their hearts. When they themselves become Christians, they will either invite us to the good work of destroying their idols, or they will be beforehand with us in doing so. And in the mean while, we must pray for them, not be angry with them."
But in course of time, as the people were more and more brought off from heathenism, and as the belief of the Gospel worked its way more thoroughly among all classes of them, laws were sent forth against offering sacrifices, burning incense, and the like, to the heathen gods. These laws were by degrees made stricter and stricter, until, in the reign of Theodosius, it was forbidden to do any act of heathen worship. And I may now tell you what took place as to the idols of Egypt in this reign.
It was in the year 391 that an old heathen temple at Alexandria was given up to the bishop of the city, who wished to build a church on the spot. In digging out the foundation for the church, some strange and disgusting things, which had been used in the heathen worship, were found; and some of the Christians carried these about the streets by way of mocking at the religion of the heathens. The heathen part of the inhabitants were enraged; a number of them made an uproar, killed some Christians, and then shut themselves up in the temple of one of their gods called Serapis, whom they believed to be the protector of Alexandria. This temple was surrounded by the houses of the priests and other buildings; and the whole was so vast and so magnificent, that it was counted as one of the wonders of the world.
The rioters, who had shut themselves up in the temple, used to rush out from it now and then, killing some of the Christians who fell in their way, and carrying off others as prisoners. These prisoners were desired to offer sacrifice: if they refused, they were cruelly tortured, and some of them were even crucified. A report of these doings was sent to Theodosius, and he ordered that all the temples of Alexandria should be destroyed. The governor invited the defenders of the temple of Serapis to attend in the market-place, where the emperor's sentence was to be read; and, on hearing what it was, they fled in all directions, so that the soldiers, who were sent to the temple, found nobody there to withstand them.
The idol of Serapis was of such vast size that it reached from one side of the temple to the other. It was adorned with jewels, and was covered with plates of gold and silver; and its worshippers believed that, if it were hurt in any way, heaven and earth would go to wreck. So when a soldier mounted a ladder, and raised his axe against it, the heathens who stood by were in great terror, and even some of the Christians could not help feeling a little uneasiness as to what might follow. But the stout soldier first made a blow which struck off one of the idol's cheeks, and then dashed his axe into one of his knees. Serapis, however, bore all this quietly, and the bystanders began to draw their breath more freely. The soldier worked away manfully, and, after a while, the huge head of the idol came crashing down, when a swarm of rats, which had long made their home in it, rushed forth, and scampered off in all directions. Even the heathens who were in the crowd, on seeing this, began to laugh at their god. The idol was demolished, and the pieces of it were carried into the circus, where a bonfire was made of them; and, in examining the temple, a number of tricks by which the priests had deceived the people were found out, so that many heathens were converted in consequence of having thus seen the vanity of their old religion, and the falsehood of the means by which it was kept up.
Egypt, as you perhaps know, does not depend on rain for its crops, but on the rising of the river Nile, which floods the country at a certain season; and the heathens had long said that the Christians were afraid to destroy the idols of Egypt, lest the gods should punish them by not allowing the water to rise. After the destruction of Serapis, the usual time for the rising of the river came, but there were no signs of it; and the heathens began to be in great delight, and to boast that their gods were going to take vengeance. Some weak Christians, too, began to think that there might be some truth in this, and sent to ask the emperor what should be done. "Better," he said, "that the Nile should not rise at all, than that we should buy the fruitfulness of Egypt by idolatry!" After a while the Nile began to swell; it soon mounted above the usual height of its flood, and the Pagans were now in hopes that Serapis was about to avenge himself by such a deluge as would punish the Christians for the destruction of the idol; but they were again disappointed by seeing the waters sink down to their proper level.
The emperor's orders were executed by the destruction of the Egyptian temples and their idols. But we are told that the bishop of Alexandria saved one image as a curiosity, and lest people should afterwards deny that their forefathers had ever been so foolish as to worship such things. Some say that this image was a figure of Jupiter, the chief of the heathen gods; others say that it was the figure of a monkey; for even monkeys were worshipped by the Egyptians!
NOTES
CHAPTER XVII.
CHURCH GOVERNMENT.
By this time the Gospel had not only been firmly settled as the religion of the great Roman empire, but had made its way into most other countries of the world then known. Here, then, we may stop to take a view of some things connected with the Church; and it will be well, in doing so, to remember what is wisely said by our own Church, in her thirty-fourth article, which is about "the Traditions of the Church" (that is to say, the practices handed down in the Church):—"It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly like; for at all times they have been divers" (that is, they have differed in different parts of Christ's Church), "and they may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's word."
First, then, as to the ministers of the Church. The three orders which had been from the beginning,—bishops, presbyters (or priests), and deacons,[12] were considered to stand by themselves, as the only orders necessary to a church. But early in the third century a number of other orders were introduced, all lower than that of deacons. These were the sub-deacons, who helped the deacons in the care of the poor, and of the property belonging to the church; the acolyths, who lighted the lamps, and assisted in the celebration of the sacraments; the exorcists, who took charge of persons suffering from afflictions resembling the possession by devils which is spoken of in the New Testament; the readers, whose business it was to read the Scriptures in church; and the doorkeepers. All these were considered to belong to the clergy; just as if among ourselves the organist, the clerk, the sexton, the singers, and the bell-ringers of a church were to be reckoned as clergy, and were to be appointed to their offices by a religious ceremony or ordination. But these new orders were not used everywhere, and, as has been said, the persons who were in these orders were not considered to be clergy in the same way as those of the three higher orders which had been ever since the days of the Apostles.
There were also, in the earliest times, women called deaconesses, such as Phœbe, who is mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans (xvi. I). These deaconesses (who were often pious widows) were employed among Christians of their own sex, for such works of mercy and instruction as were not fit for men to do (or, at least, were supposed not to be so according to the manners of the Greeks, and of the other ancient nations). But the order of deaconesses does not seem to have lasted long.
All bishops, as I have said already, are of one order.[13] But in course of time, it was found convenient for the government of the Church, that some of them should be placed higher than others; and the way in which this was settled was very natural. The bishops of a country found it desirable to meet sometimes, that they might consult with each other, as we are told that the Apostles did at Jerusalem (Acts xv.); and in most countries these meetings (which were called synods or councils) came to be regularly held once or twice a year. The chief city of each district was naturally the place of meeting; and the bishop of this city was naturally the chairman or president of the assembly —just as we read that, in the council of the Apostles, St. James, who was bishop of Jerusalem, where it was held, spoke with the greatest authority, after all the rest, and that his "sentence" was given as the judgment of the assembly. These bishops, then, got the title of metropolitans, because each was bishop of the metropolis (or mother-city) of the country in which the council was held; and thus they came to be considered higher than their brethren. And, of course, when any messages or letters were to be sent to the churches of other countries, the metropolitan was the person in whose name it was done.
And, as all this was the natural course of things in every country, it was also natural that the bishops of very great cities should be considered as still higher than the ordinary metropolitans. Thus the bishoprics of Rome, of Alexandria, and of Antioch, which were the three greatest cities of the empire, were regarded as the chief bishoprics, and as superior to all others. Those of Rome and Antioch were both supposed to have been founded by St. Peter, and Alexandria was believed to have been founded by St. Mark, under the direction of St. Peter. Hence it afterwards came to be thought that this was the cause of their greatness; and the bishops of Rome, especially, liked to have this believed, because they could then pretend to claim some sort of especial power, which they said that our Lord had given to St. Peter above the other Apostles, and that St. Peter had left it to his successors. But such claims were quite unfounded, and it is clear that the real reason why these three churches stood higher than others was that they were in the three greatest cities of the whole empire.
But the Church of Rome had many advantages over Alexandria and Antioch, as well as over every other. It was the greatest and the richest of all, so that it could send help to distressed Christians in all countries. No other church of the West had an Apostle to boast of, but Rome could boast of the two great Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, who had laboured in it, and had given their blood for the faith in the Gospel in it. Most of the western nations had received their knowledge of the Gospel through the Roman Church, and on this account they looked up with respect to it as a mother. And as people from all parts of the empire were continually going to Rome and returning, the Church of the great capital kept up a constant intercourse with other churches in all quarters. Thus the bishops of Rome were naturally much respected everywhere, and, so long as they did not take too much upon themselves, great regard was paid to their opinion; but when they tried to interfere with the rights of other bishops, or to lord it over other churches, they were firmly withstood, and were desired to keep within their proper bounds, as Stephen of Rome was by St. Cyprian of Carthage.[14]
Another thing must be mentioned as creditable to the Roman Church, and as one which did much to raise the power of its bishops. The heresies which we have read of, all began in the East, where the people were more sharp-witted and restless in their thoughts than those of the West. The Romans, on the other hand, had not the turn of mind which led to these errors, but rather attended to practical things. Hence they were disposed to hold to the faith which had come down to them from their fathers, and to defend it against the new opinions which were brought forward from time to time. This steadiness, then, gave them a great advantage over the Christians of the East, who were frequently changing from one thing to another. It gained for the Roman Church much credit and authority; and when the great Arian controversy arose, the effects of the difference between the eastern and the western character were vastly increased. The Romans (except for a short time, when a bishop named Liberius was won over by the Arians) kept to their old faith. The eastern parties looked to the bishop of Rome as if he had the whole western Church in his hands. They constantly carried their quarrels to him, asking him to give his help, and he was the strongest friend that they could find anywhere. And when the side which Rome had always upheld got the victory at last, the importance of the Roman bishops rose in consequence. But even after all this, if the bishop of Rome tried to meddle with other churches, his right to do so was still denied. Many canons (that is to say, rules of the Church) were made to forbid the carrying of any quarrel for judgment beyond the country in which it began; and, however glad the churches of Africa and of the East were to have the bishop of Rome for a friend, they would never allow him to assume the airs of a master.
And from the time when Constantinople was built in the place of Byzantium, a new great Church arose. Byzantium had been only a common bishopric, and for a time Constantinople was not called anything more than a common bishopric; but in real importance it was very much more, so that even a bishop of Antioch, the third see in the whole Christian world, thought himself advanced when he was made bishop of Constantinople instead. But the second General Council (which as we have seen[15] was held at Constantinople in the year 381) made a canon by which Constantinople was placed next to Rome, "because," as the canon said, "it is a new Rome." This raised the jealousy, not only of Antioch, and still more of Alexandria, at having an upstart bishopric (as they considered it) put over their heads; but it gave great offence to the bishops of Rome, who could not bear such a rivalry as was now threatened, and were besides very angry on account of the reason which was given for placing Constantinople next after Rome. For the council, when it said that Constantinople was to be second among all Churches, because of its being "a new Rome," meant to say that the reason why Rome itself stood first was nothing more than its being the old capital of the empire, whereas the bishops of Rome wished it to be thought that their power was founded on their being the successors of St. Peter.
We shall by-and-by see something of the effects of these jealousies.
NOTES
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHRISTIAN WORSHIP.
PART I.
In the early days of the Gospel, while the Christians were generally poor, and when they were obliged to meet in fear of the heathen, their worship was held in private houses, and sometimes in burial-places under-ground. But after a time buildings were expressly set apart for worship. It has been mentioned that in the years of quiet, between the death of Valerian and the last persecution (A.D. 261-303), these churches were built much more handsomely than before, and were furnished with gold and silver plate and other rich ornaments.[16] And after the conversion of Constantine, they became still finer and costlier. The clergy then wore rich dresses at service, the music was less simple, and the ceremonies were multiplied. Some of the old heathen temples were turned into churches; but temples were not built in a shape very suitable for Christian worship, and the pattern of the new churches was rather taken from the halls of justice, called Basilicas, which were to be found in every large town. These buildings were of an oblong shape, with a broad middle part, and on each side of it an aisle, separated from it by a row of pillars. This lower part of the basilica was used by merchants who met to talk about their business, and by all sorts of loungers who met to tell and hear the news. But at the upper end of the oblong there was a half circle, with its floor raised above the level of the rest; and in the middle of this part the judge of the city sat. Now if you will compare this description with the plan of a church, you will see that the broad middle part of the basilica answers to what is called the body or nave of the church; that the side aisles are alike in each; and that the further part of the basilica, with its raised floor, answers to the chancel of a church; while the holy table, or altar, stands in the place answering to the judge's seat in the basilica. Some of these halls were given up by the emperors to be turned into churches, and the plan of them was found convenient as a pattern in the building of new churches.
On entering a church, the first part was the Porch, in which there were places for the catechumens (that is to say, those who were preparing for baptism); for those who were supposed to be possessed with devils, and who were under the care of the exorcists;[17] and for the lowest kinds of those who were undergoing penance. Beyond this porch were the Beautiful Gates, which opened into the Nave of the church. Just within these gates were those penitents whose time of penance was nearly ended; and the rest of the nave was the place for the faithful—that is to say, for those who were admitted to all the privileges of Christians. At the upper end of the nave, a place called the Choir was railed in for the singers; and then, last of all, came the raised part or chancel, which has been spoken of. This was called the Sanctuary, and was set apart for the clergy only. The women sat in church apart from the men; sometimes they were in the aisles, and sometimes in galleries. Churches generally had a court in front of them or about them, in which were the lodgings of the clergy, and a building for the administration of baptism, called the Baptistery.
In the early times, churches were not adorned with pictures or statues; for Christians were at first afraid to have any ornaments of the kind, lest they should fall into idolatry like the heathen. No such things as images or pictures of our Lord, or of His saints, were known among them; and in their every-day life, instead of the figures of gods, with which the heathens used to adorn their houses, their furniture, their cups, and their seals, the Christians made use of emblems only. Thus, instead of pretending to make a likeness of our Lord's human form, they made a figure of a shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders, to signify the Good Shepherd who gave his life for his sheep (St. John x. 11). Other ornaments of the same kind were—a dove, signifying the Holy Ghost; a ship, signifying the Church, the ark of salvation, sailing towards heaven; a fish, which was meant to remind them of their having been born again in the water, at their baptism; a musical instrument called a lyre, to signify Christian joy; and an anchor, the figure of Christian hope. About the year 300, the Council of Elvira, in Spain, made a canon forbidding pictures in church, which shows that the practice had then begun, and was growing; and also that in Spain, at least, it was thought to be dangerous (as indeed it too surely proved to be). And a hundred years later, Epiphanius, a famous bishop of Salamis, in the island of Cyprus, tore a curtain which he found hanging in a church, with a figure of our Lord, or of some saint, painted on it. He declared that such things were altogether unlawful, and desired that the curtain might be used to bury some poor man in, promising to send the church a plain one instead of it.
Christians used to sign themselves with the sign of the cross on many occasions, and figures of the cross were early set up in churches. But crucifixes (which are figures of our Lord on the cross, although ignorant people sometimes call the cross itself a crucifix) were not known until hundreds of years after the time of which we are now speaking.
The church-service of Christians was always the same as to its main parts, although there were little differences as to order and the like. Justin Martyr, who lived (as we have seen) about the middle of the second century,[18] describes the service as it was in his time. It began, he says, with readings from the Scriptures; then followed a discourse by the chief clergyman who was present; and there was much singing, of which a part was from the Old Testament psalms, while a part was made up of hymns on Christian subjects. The discourses of the clergy were generally meant to explain the Scripture lessons which had been read. At first these discourses were very plain, and as much as possible like ordinary talk; and from this they got the name of homilies, which properly meant nothing more than conversations. But by degrees they grew to be more like speeches, and people used to flock to them, just as many do now, from a wish to hear something fine, rather than with any notion of taking the preacher's words to heart, and trying to be made better by them. And in the fourth century, when a clergyman preached eloquently, the people used to cheer him on by clapping their hands, waving their handkerchiefs, and shouting out, "Orthodox!" "Thirteenth apostle!" or other such cries. Good men, of course, did not like to be treated in this way, as if they were actors at a theatre; and we often find St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine (of both of whom you will hear by-and-by) objecting to it in their sermons, and begging their hearers not to show their admiration in such foolish and unseemly ways. But it seems that the people went on with it nevertheless; and no doubt there must have been some preachers who were vain enough and silly enough to be pleased with it.
In the time of the Apostles the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was celebrated in the evening, as it had been by our blessed Lord Himself on the night in which He was betrayed. Thus it was, for instance, when the disciples at Troas "came together upon the first day of the week (Sunday) to break bread" (that is, to celebrate the Lord's Supper), and "Paul preached unto them, and continued his speech until midnight" (Acts xx. 7). In the service for this sacrament there was a thanksgiving to God for His bounty in bestowing the fruits of the earth. The congregation offered gifts of bread and wine, and from these the elements which were to be consecrated were taken. They also brought gifts of money, which was used for the relief of the poor, for the support of the clergy, and for other good and religious purposes. Either before or after the sacrament, there was a meal called the Love-feast, for which all the members of the congregation brought provisions, according as they could afford. All of them sat down to it as equals, in token of their being alike in Christ's brotherhood; and it ended with psalm-singing and prayer. But even in very early days (as St. Paul shows us in his first epistle to the Corinthians, xi. 21, 22), there was sad misbehaviour at these meals; and besides this, such religious feasts gave the heathen an excuse for their stories that the Christians met to feed on human flesh and to commit other abominations in secret.[19] For these reasons, after a time, the love-feast was separated from the holy Communion, and at length it was entirely given up.
In the second century, the administration of the Lord's Supper, instead of being in the evening as at first, was added on to the morning service, and then a difference was made between the two parts of the service. At the earlier part of it the catechumens and penitents might be present, but when the Communion office was going to begin, a deacon called out, "Let no one of the catechumens or of the hearers stay." After this none were allowed to remain except those who were entitled to communicate, which all baptized Christians did in those days, unless they were shut out from the Church on account of their misdeeds. The "breaking of bread" in the Lord's Supper was at first daily, as we know from the early chapters of the Acts (ii. 46); but this practice does not seem to have lasted beyond the time when the faith of the Christians was in its first warmth, and it became usual to celebrate the holy Communion on the Lord's day only. When Christianity became the religion of the empire, and there was now no fear of persecution, the earlier part of the service was open not only to catechumens and penitents, but to Jews and heathens; and in the fifth century, when the Church was mostly made up of persons who had been baptized and trained in Christianity from their infancy, the distinction between the "service of the catechumens" and the "service of the faithful" was no longer kept up.
The length of time during which converts were obliged to be catechumens before being admitted to baptism differed in different parts of the Church. In some places it was two years, in some three years; but if during this time they fell sick and appeared to be in danger of death, they were baptized without waiting any longer.
At baptism, those who received it professed their faith, or their sponsors did so for them, and from this began the use of creeds, containing, in few words, the chief articles of the Christian faith. The sign of the cross was made over those who were baptized, "in token that they should not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under His banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ's faithful soldiers and servants unto their life's end." The kiss of peace was given to them in token of their being taken into spiritual brotherhood; white robes were put on them, to signify their cleansing from sin; and a mixture of milk and honey was administered to them, as if to give them a foretaste of their heavenly inheritance, of which the earthly Canaan, "flowing with milk and honey" (Exod. iii. 8, &c.) had been a figure. Other ceremonies were added in the fourth century, such as the use of salt and lights, and an anointing with oil in token of their being "made kings and priests to God" (Rev. i. 6; 1 Pet. ii. 5-9), besides the anointing with a mixture called chrism at confirmation, which had been practised in earlier times.
The usual time of baptism was the season from Easter-eve to Whitsuntide; but in case of danger, persons might be baptized at any time.
During the fourth century there was a growth of superstitions and corruptions in the Church. Great numbers of converts came into it, bringing their old heathen notions with them, and not well knowing what they might expect, but with an eager desire to find as much to interest them in the worship and life of Christians as they had found in the ceremonies and shows of their former religion. And in order that such converts might not be altogether disappointed, the Christian teachers of the age allowed a number of things which soon began to have very bad effects; thus, as we are told in the preface to our own Prayer-book, St. Augustine complained that in his time (which was about the year 400) ceremonies "were grown to such a number that the estate of Christian people was in worse case concerning that matter than were the Jews." Among the corruptions which were now growing, although they did not come to a head until afterwards, one was an excess of reverence for saints, which led to the practices of making addresses to them, and of paying superstitious honours to their dead bodies. Another corruption was the improper use of paintings or images, which even in St. Augustine's time had gone so far that, as he owns with sorrow, many of the ignorant were "worshippers of pictures." Another was the fashion of going on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in which Constantine's mother, Helena, set an example which was soon followed by thousands, who not only fancied that the sight of the places hallowed by the great events of Scripture would kindle or heighten their devotion, but that prayers would be especially pleasing to God if they were offered up in such places. And thus great numbers flocked to Palestine from all quarters, and even from Britain, among other countries; and on their return they carried back with them water from the Jordan, earth from the Redeemer's sepulchre, or what they believed to be chips of the true cross, which was supposed to have been found during Helena's visit to Jerusalem. The mischiefs of this fashion soon showed themselves. St. Basil's brother, Gregory of Nyssa, wrote a little book expressly for the purpose of persuading people not to go on pilgrimage. He said that he himself had been neither better nor worse for a visit which he had paid to the Holy Land; but that such a pilgrimage might even be dangerous for others, because the inhabitants of the country were so vicious that there was more likelihood of getting harm from them than good from the sight of the holy places. "We should rather try," he said, "to go out of the body than to drag it about from place to place." Another very learned man of the same time, St. Jerome, although he had taken up his own abode at Bethlehem, saw so much of the evils which arose from pilgrimages that he gave very earnest warnings against them. "It is no praise," he says, "to have been at Jerusalem, but to have lived religiously at Jerusalem. The sight of the places where our Lord died and rose again are profitable to those who bear their own cross and daily rise again with Him. But for those who say, 'The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord' (Jerem. vii. 4), let them hear the Apostle's words, 'Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you' (1 Cor. iii. 16). The court of heaven is open to approach from Jerusalem and from Britain alike; 'for the kingdom of God is within you'" (St. Luke xvii. 21).
There were, indeed, some persons who rose up to oppose the errors of which I have been speaking. But unhappily they mixed up the truths which they wished to teach with so many errors of their own, and they carried on their opposition so unwisely, that, instead of doing good, they did harm, by setting people against such truth as they taught on account of the error which was joined with it, and of the wrong way which they took of teaching it. By such opposition the growth of superstition was not checked, but advanced and strengthened.
NOTES
CHAPTER XIX.
ARCADIUS AND HONORIUS.
A.D. 395-423.
The great emperor Theodosius was succeeded in 395 by his two sons, Arcadius, who was eighteen years of age, and Honorius, who was only eleven. Arcadius had the east, and Honorius the west; and after this division, the empire was never again united in anything like the full extent of its old greatness. The reigns of these princes were full of misfortunes, especially in the western empire, where swarms of barbarians poured down from the north, and did a vast deal of mischief. One of these barbarous nations, the Goths, whose king was named Alaric, thrice besieged Rome itself. The first time, Alaric was bought off by a large sum of money. After the second siege, he set up an emperor of his own making; and after the third siege, the city was given up to his soldiers for plunder. Rude as these Goths were, they had been brought over to a kind of Christianity, although it was not the true faith of the Church. There had, indeed, been Christians among the Goths nearly 150 years before this time; for many of them had been converted by Christian captives, whom they carried off in the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, about the year 260; and a Gothic bishop, named Theophilus, had sat at the council of Nicæa. But great changes had since been wrought among them by a remarkable man named Ulfilas, who was consecrated as their bishop in the year 348. He found that they did not know the use of letters; so he made an alphabet for them, and translated the Scriptures into their language, and he taught them many useful arts. Thus he got such an influence over them, that they received all his words as law, and he was called "the Moses of the Goths." But, unhappily, Ulfilas was drawn into Arianism, and this was the doctrine which he taught to his people, instead of the sound faith which had before been preached to them by Theophilus and others. But still, although their Christianity was not of the right kind, it had good effects on these rough people; and so it appeared when Rome was given over by the conqueror Alaric to his soldiers. Although they destroyed temples, they paid great respect to churches; and they did not commit such terrible acts of cruelty and violence as had been usual when cities were taken by heathen armies.
I need not say more about these sad times; but I must not forget to tell what was done by a monk, named Telemachus, in the reign of Honorius. In the year 403, one of the emperor's generals defeated Alaric in the north of Italy; and the Romans, who in those days were not much used to victories, made the most of this one, and held great games in honour of it. Now the public games of the Romans were generally of a cruel kind. We have seen how, in former days, they used to let wild beasts loose against the Christian martyrs in their amphitheatres;[20] and another of their favourite pastimes was to set men who were called gladiators (that is, swordsmen) to fight and kill each other in those same places. The love of these shows of gladiators was so strong in the people of Rome, that Constantine had not ventured to do away with them there, although he would not allow any such things in the new Christian capital which he built. And the custom of setting men to slaughter one another for the amusement of the lookers-on had lasted at Rome down to the time of Honorius.
Telemachus, then, who was an eastern monk, was greatly shocked that Christians should take pleasure in these savage sports; and when he heard of the great games which were preparing, he resolved to bear his witness against them. For this purpose, therefore, he went all the way to Rome, and got into the amphitheatre, close to the arena (as the place where the gladiators fought was called); and when the fight had begun, he leaped over the barrier which separated him from the arena, rushed in between the gladiators, and tried to part them. The people who crowded the vast building grew furious at being baulked of their amusement; they shouted out with rage, and threw stones, or whatever else they could lay their hands on, at Telemachus, so that he was soon pelted to death. But when they saw him lying dead, their anger suddenly cooled, and they were struck with horror at the crime of which they had been guilty, although they had never thought of the wickedness of feasting their eyes on the bloodshed of gladiators. The emperor said that the death of Telemachus was really a martyrdom, and proposed to do away with the shows of gladiators; and the people, who were now filled with sorrow and shame, agreed to give up their cruel diversions. So the life of the brave monk was not thrown away, since it was the means of saving the lives of many, and of preserving multitudes from the sin of sacrificing their fellow-men for their sport.
NOTES
CHAPTER XX.
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM.
A.D. 347-407.
PART I.
At this time lived St. John Chrysostom, whose name is known to us all from the prayer in our service which is called "A Prayer of St. Chrysostom."
He was born at Antioch about the year 347. While he was still a little child, he lost his father; but his mother, Anthusa, who was left a widow at the age of twenty, remained unmarried, and devoted herself to the training of her son. During his early years, she brought him up with religious care, and he was afterwards sent to finish his education under a famous heathen philosopher. I have already had occasion to tell you that Christian youths, while in the schools of such teachers, ran a great risk of being turned from the Gospel, and that many of them fell away;[21] but John was preserved from the danger by daily studying the Scriptures, and thus his faith was kept fresh and warm. The philosopher had such a high notion of his talents, that he long after spoke of John as the best of all the pupils he had ever had, and said that he would have been the worthiest to succeed him as a teacher, "if the Christians had not stolen him."
When he left this master, John studied law; but, after trying it for a time, he found that there were things about the business of an Antioch lawyer which went against his conscience; so he resolved to give up the law, and to become a monk. But his mother thought that he might lead a really Christian life without rushing away into the wilderness and leaving his natural duties behind him. She took him by the hand, led him into her chamber, and made him sit down beside her on the bed. Then she burst into tears: she reminded him of all the kindness which she had shown him, and of the cares and troubles which she had borne for his sake. She told him that it had been her chief comfort to look on his face, which put her in mind of the husband whom she had lost. "Make me not once more a widow," she said: "wait only for my death, which may, perhaps, not be far off. When you have laid me in the grave, then you may go where you will—even beyond the sea, if such be your wish, but so long as I live, bear to stay with me, and do not offend God by afflicting your mother." The young man yielded to these entreaties, and remained in his mother's house, although he gave up all worldly business, and lived after the strict manner of the monks. But when the good Anthusa was dead, he withdrew to the mountains, near Antioch, in which a great number of monks dwelt. There he spent four years in a monastery, and two as a hermit in a cave. But at last his hard life made him very weak and ill, so that he was obliged to return to Antioch; and soon after this he was ordained to be one of the clergy, and was appointed chief preacher of the city (A.D. 386).
Of all the great men of the ancient Church, John was the most famous for eloquence; and from this it was that he got the name of Chrysostom, which means golden-mouthed. His sermons (of which hundreds still remain) were not mere displays of fine words, but were always meant to instruct and to improve those who heard them. And, while he was chief preacher at Antioch, he had a very remarkable opportunity of using his gifts of speech. An outbreak had taken place in the city, on account of a new tax which Theodosius, who was then emperor, had laid on the people (A.D. 387). The statues of the emperor and of his family, which stood in public places, were thrown down, and were dragged about the streets with all sorts of mockery and insult. But the riot was easily put down, and then the inhabitants began to be in great anxiety and terror as to the punishment which Theodosius might inflict on them. For although the frightful massacre of Thessalonica[22] had not at that time taken place, they knew that the emperor was not to be trifled with, and that his fits of anger were terrible. They expected that they might be given up to slaughter, and their city to destruction. For a time, few of them ventured out of their houses; and those few slunk along the streets as if they were afraid of being seized. Many were imprisoned, and were cruelly tortured or put to death; others ran away, leaving all that they had behind them; and the public amusements, of which the people of Antioch were excessively fond, were, for a time, quite given up.
The bishop, Flavian, who was a very aged man, in bad health and infirm, left the bedside of his sister (who was supposed to be dying) to set out for Constantinople and implore the emperor's mercy. And while he was absent Chrysostom took the lead among the clergy. He preached every day in a solemn and awakening tone; he tried to turn the terrors of the people to their lasting good, by directing their thoughts to the great judgment, in which all men must hereafter appear, and urging them, whatever their present fate might be, to strive after peace with God, and a share in his mercy, through Christ, in that awful day. The effect of this preaching was wonderful;—day after day, vast crowds flocked to listen to it, forgetting every thing else: even many heathens were among them.
The news of the disturbances at Antioch had reached Constantinople long before Flavian; and the bishop, as he was on his way, met two commissioners, who had been sent by the emperor to declare his sentence to the people. The buildings of the city were to be spared; but it was to lose its rank among the cities of the empire. The baths, which in those countries were reckoned almost as a necessary of life, were to be shut up, and all public amusements were to be at an end. The officers, after reaching Antioch, and publishing this sentence, set about inquiring who had taken a part in the tumult. Judgment was to be executed without mercy on all whose guilt could be proved; and the anxiety of the people became extreme. A number of monks and hermits came down from the mountains, and busied themselves in trying to comfort those who were in distress. One of these monks, Macedonius, a man of rough and simple appearance, but of great note for holiness, met the emperor's commissioners as they were riding through the market-place; whereupon he laid hold of one of them by the cloak, and desired them both to dismount. At first they were angry; but, on being told who he was, they alighted and fell on their knees before him; for, in those days, monks famous for their holiness were looked on much as if they had been prophets. And Macedonius spoke to them in the tone of a prophet:—"Go," he said, "say to the emperor, You are a man; your subjects too are men, made in the image of God. You are enraged on account of images of brass; but a living and reasonable image is of far higher worth than these. Destroy the brazen images, and it is easy to make others; but you cannot restore a single hair of the heads of the men whom you have put to death." The commissioners were much struck with the way in which Macedonius uttered this, although they did not understand what he said (as he spoke in the Syrian language); and when his words were explained to them in Greek, they agreed that one of them should go to the emperor, to tell him how things were at Antioch, and to beg for further instructions.
In the mean time, Bishop Flavian had made his way to the emperor's presence. Theodosius received him with kindness, and spoke calmly of the favour which he had always shown to Antioch, and of the base return which the citizens had made for it. The bishop wept bitterly when he heard this. He owned that his flock had deserved the worst of punishments; but, he said, no punishment could be so severe as undeserved mercy. He told the emperor that, instead of the statues which had been thrown down, he had now the opportunity of setting up far better monuments in the hearts of his people, by showing them forgiveness. He urged the duty of forgiveness in all the ways that he could think of; he drew a moving picture of the misery of the inhabitants of Antioch, which he could not bear to see again; and he declared that, unless he gained the favour which he had come to beg for, he would never return to his city.
Theodosius was moved almost to tears by the old man's words. "What wonder is it," he said, "if I, who am but a man, should pardon my fellow-men, when the Maker of the world has come on earth, and has submitted to death, for the forgiveness of mankind?" and he pressed Flavian to return to Antioch with all speed, for the comfort of his people. The bishop, on reaching home, found that his sister, whom he had not hoped to see any more in this world, was recovered; and we may well imagine that his flock were full of gratitude to him for what he had done. But he refused all thanks or credit on account of the success of his mission. "It was not my doing," he said: "it was God who softened the emperor's heart."
When Chrysostom had been chief preacher of Antioch about twelve years, the bishopric of Constantinople fell vacant (A.D. 397); and there was so much strife for it, that at length the people, as the only way of settling the matter quietly, begged the emperor Arcadius to name a bishop for them. Now it happened that the emperor's favourite counsellor, Eutropius, had been at Antioch a short time before, and had been very much struck with Chrysostom's preaching; so he advised the emperor to choose him. Chrysostom was appointed accordingly; and, as he was so much beloved by the people of Antioch that they might perhaps have made a disturbance rather than part with him, he was decoyed outside the city, and was then secretly sent off to Constantinople. Eutropius was so worthless a man that we can hardly suppose him to have acted from quite pure motives in this affair. Perhaps he wished to get credit with the people for making so good a choice. Perhaps, too, he may have hoped that he might be able to do as he liked with a bishop of his own choosing. But if he thought so, he was much disappointed; for Chrysostom behaved as a faithful and true pastor, without any fear of man.
The new bishop's preaching was as much admired at Constantinople as it had been at Antioch, and he soon gained great influence among his flock. And besides attending diligently to his work at home, he set on foot missions to some heathen nations, and also to the Goths, who, as we have seen,[23] were Arians. But besides the Goths at a distance, there were then a great number of the same people at Constantinople; for the Greeks and Romans of those days were so much fallen away from the bravery of their forefathers, that the emperors were obliged to hire Gothic soldiers to defend their dominions. Chrysostom, therefore, took great pains to bring over these Goths at Constantinople to the Church. He ordained clergy of their own nation for them, and set apart a church for them. And he often went himself to this church, and preached to them in Greek, while an interpreter repeated his words to them in their own language.
But unhappily he soon made enemies at Constantinople. For he found the church there in a very bad state, and, in trying to set things right, he gave offence to many people of various kinds; and, although he was indeed an excellent man, perhaps he did not always act with such wisdom and such calmness of temper as might have been wished. The last bishop, Nectarius, was a man of high rank, who had never dreamt of being a bishop or any such thing, until at the council of Constantinople he was suddenly chosen instead of the good Gregory.[24] At that time Nectarius was not even baptized; so that he had first to receive baptism, and then within a week he was consecrated as bishop of the second church in the whole Christian world. And it proved that he was too old to change his ways very much. He continued to live in a costly style, as he had done all his life before; and he let the clergy go on much as they pleased, so that they generally fell into easy and luxurious habits, and some of them were even quite scandalous in their conduct. Now Chrysostom's ways and notions were quite opposite to all this. He sold the rich carpets and other valuable furniture which he found in the bishop's palace; nay, he even sold some of the church ornaments, that he might get money for building hospitals and for other charitable purposes. He did not care for company, and his health was delicate; and for these reasons he always took his meals by himself, and did not ask bishops who came to Constantinople to lodge in his palace or to dine with him, as Nectarius had done. This does not seem to be quite according to St. Paul's saying, that a bishop should be "given to hospitality" (1 Tim. iii. 2); but Chrysostom thought that among the Christians of a great city like Constantinople the strange bishops could be at no loss for entertainment, and that his own time and money might be better spent than in entertaining them. But many of them were very much offended, and it is said that one, Acacius, of Berrhœa, in Syria, declared in anger, "I will cook his pot for him!"
Chrysostom's reforms also interfered much with the habits of his clergy. He made them perform service at night in their churches for people who were too busy to attend during the day; and many of them were very unwilling to leave their homes at late hours and to do additional work. Some of them, too, were envious of him because he was so famous as a preacher, and they looked eagerly to find something in his sermons which might be turned against him. And besides all these enemies among the clergy, he provoked many among the courtiers and the rich people of Constantinople, by plainly attacking their vices.
Although Chrysostom had chiefly owed his bishopric to Eutropius, he was afterwards drawn into many disputes with him. For in that age and in that country things were very different from what they happily are among ourselves, and a person in power like Eutropius might commit great acts of tyranny and oppression, while the poor people who suffered had no means of redress. But many of those whom Eutropius meant to plunder or to imprison took refuge in churches, where debtors and others were then considered to be safe, as it was not lawful to seize them in the holy buildings. Eutropius persuaded the emperor to make a law by which this right of shelter (or asylum, as it was called) was taken away from churches. But soon after he himself fell into disgrace, and in his terror he rushed to the cathedral, and laid hold of the altar for protection. Some soldiers were sent to seize him; but Chrysostom would not let them enter; and next day, when the church was crowded by a multitude of people who had flocked to see what would become of Eutropius, the bishop preached on the uncertainty of all earthly greatness. While Eutropius lay crouching under the holy table, Chrysostom turned to him and reminded him how he had tried to take away that very privilege of churches from which he was now seeking protection; and he desired the people to beg both God and the emperor to pardon the fallen favourite. By all this he did not mean to insult the wretched Eutropius, but to turn the rage of the multitude into pity. It was said, however, by some that he had triumphed over his enemy's misfortunes; and he also got into trouble for giving Eutropius shelter, and was carried before the emperor to answer for doing so. But the bishop boldly upheld the right of the Church to protect the defenceless, and Eutropius was, for the time, allowed to go free.
Thus there were many at Constantinople who were ready to take part against Chrysostom, if an opportunity should offer; and it was not long before they found one.
The bishop of Alexandria at this time was a bold and bad man, named Theophilus. He was jealous of the see of Constantinople, because the second general council had lately placed it above his own;[25] he disliked the bishop because he had hoped to put one of his own clergy into the place, and had seen enough of Chrysostom at his first meeting to know that he could not make a tool of him; and although he had been obliged by the emperor and Eutropius to consecrate Chrysostom as bishop, it was with a very bad grace that he did so.
There were then great quarrels as to the opinions of the famous Origen, who had lived two hundred years before.[26] Some of his opinions were really wrong, and others were very strange, if they were not wrong too. But besides these, a number of things had been laid to his charge of which he seems to have been quite innocent. If Theophilus really cared at all about the matter, he was in his heart favourable to Origen. But he found it convenient to take the opposite side; and he cruelly persecuted such of the Egyptian monks as were said to be touched with Origen's errors. The chief of these monks were four brothers, called the long or tall brothers: one of them was that same Ammonius who cut off his ear, and was ready to cut out his tongue, rather than be a bishop.[27] Theophilus had made much of these brothers, and had employed two of them in managing his accounts. But these two found out such practices of his in money matters as quite shocked them, and as, after this, they refused to stay with the bishop any longer, he charged them and their brothers with Origenism (as the following of Origen's opinions was called). They denied that they held any of the errors which Theophilus laid to their charge; but he went with soldiers into the desert, hunted out the brothers, destroyed their cells, burnt a number of books, and even killed some persons. The tall brothers and some of their friends fled into the Holy Land, but their enemy had power enough to prevent their remaining there, and they then sought a refuge at Constantinople.
On hearing of their arrival in his city, Chrysostom inquired about them, and, finding that they bore a good character, he treated them kindly; but he would not admit them to communion until he knew what Theophilus had to say against them. Theophilus, however, was told that Chrysostom had admitted them, and he wrote a furious letter to him about it. The brothers were very much alarmed lest they should be turned away at Constantinople, as they had been in the Holy Land; and one day when the empress Eudoxia was in a church, they went to her and entreated her to get the emperor's leave that a council might be held to examine their case.
Theophilus was summoned to appear before this council, and give an account of his behaviour to the brothers; but when he got to Constantinople, he acted as if, instead of being under a charge of misbehaviour himself, he had been called to judge the bishop of the capital. He would have nothing to do with Chrysostom. He spent large sums of money in bribing courtiers and others to favour his own side; and, when he thought he had made all sure, he held a meeting of six and thirty bishops, at a place called the Oak, which lay on the Asiatic shore, opposite to Constantinople (A.D. 403). A number of trumpery charges were brought against Chrysostom, and, as he refused to appear before such a meeting, which was almost entirely made up of Egyptian bishops, and had no right whatever to try him, they found him guilty of various offences, and, among the rest, of high treason! The emperor and empress had been drawn into taking part against him, and he was condemned to banishment. But on the night after he had been sent across the Bosphorus (the strait which divides Constantinople from the Asiatic shore), the city was shaken by an earthquake. The empress in her terror supposed this to be a judgment against the injustice which had been committed, and hastily sent off a messenger to beg that the bishop would return. And when it was known next day that he was on his way back, so great was the joy of his flock that the Bosphorus was covered with vessels, carrying vast multitudes of people, who eagerly crowded to welcome him.
Within a few months after his return, Chrysostom again got into trouble for finding fault with some disorderly and almost heathenish rejoicings which were held around a new statue of the empress, close to the door of his cathedral. Theophilus had returned to Egypt, and did not again appear at Constantinople, but directed the proceedings of Chrysostom's other enemies who were on the spot. Another council was held, and, of course, found the bishop guilty of whatever was laid to his charge. He did not mean to desert his flock, unless he were forced to do so; he, therefore, kept possession of the cathedral and of the episcopal house for some months. During this time he was often disturbed by his enemies; nay, more than once, attempts were even made to murder him. At last, on receiving an order from the emperor to leave his house, he saw that the time was come when he must yield to force. His flock guarded the cathedral day and night, and would have resisted any attempt to seize him; but he did not think it right to risk disorder and bloodshed. He, therefore, took a solemn leave of his chief friends, giving good advice and speaking words of comfort to each. He begged them not to despair for the loss of him, but to submit to any bishop who should be chosen by general consent to succeed him. And then, while, in order to take off the people's attention, his mule was held at one door of the church, as if he might be expected to come out there, he quietly left the building by another door, and gave himself up as a prisoner, declaring that he wished his case to be fairly tried by a council (A.D. 404).
He was first carried to Nicæa, where he remained nearly a month. During this time he pressed for a fresh inquiry into his conduct, but in vain; and neither he nor his friends could obtain leave for him to retire to some place where he might live with comfort. He was sentenced to be carried to Cucusus, among the mountains of Taurus—a name which seemed to bode him no good, as an earlier bishop of Constantinople, Paul, had been starved and afterwards strangled there, in the time of the Arian troubles (A.D. 351).
On his way to Cucusus, he was often in danger from robbers who infested the road, and still more from monks of the opposite party, who were furious against him. When he arrived at the place, he found it a wretched little town, where he was frozen by cold in winter, and parched by excessive heat in summer. Sometimes he could hardly get provisions; and when he was ill (as often happened), he could not get proper medicines. Sometimes, too, the robbers, from the neighbouring country of Isauria, made plundering attacks, so that Chrysostom was obliged to leave Cucusus in haste, and to take refuge in a castle called Arabissus.
But, although there was much to distress him in his banishment, there was also much to comfort him. His great name, his sufferings, and his innocence were known throughout all Christian churches. Letters of consolation and sympathy poured in on him from all quarters. The bishop of Rome himself wrote to him as to an equal, and even the emperor of the west, Honorius, interceded for him, although without success. The bishop of Cucusus, and his other neighbours, treated him with all respect and kindness, and many pilgrims made their way over the rough mountain roads to see him, and to express their reverence for him. His friends at a distance sent him such large sums of money that he was able to redeem captives and to support missions to the Goths and to the Persians, and, after all, had to desire that they would not send him so much, as their gifts were more than he could use. In truth, no part of his life was so full of honour and of influence as the three years which he spent in exile.
At length the court became jealous of the interest which was so generally felt in Chrysostom, and he was suddenly hurried off from Cucusus, with the intention of removing him to a still wilder and more desolate place at the farthest border of the empire. He had to travel rapidly in the height of summer, and the great heat renewed the ailments from which he had often suffered. At length he became so ill that he felt his end to be near, and desired the soldiers who had the charge of him to stop at a town called Comana. There he exchanged his mean travelling dress for the best which he possessed; he once more received the sacrament of his Saviour's body and blood; and, after uttering the words "Glory be to God for all things," with his last breath he added "Amen!" (September 14th, 407).
Thirty years after this, Chrysostom's body was removed to Constantinople. When the vessel which conveyed it was seen leaving the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, a multitude, far greater than that which had hailed his first return from banishment, poured forth from Constantinople, in shipping and boats of all kinds, which covered the narrow strait. And the emperor, Theodosius II., son of Arcadius and Eudoxia, bent humbly over the coffin, and lamented with tears the guilt of his parents in the persecution of the great and holy bishop.
NOTES
CHAPTER XXI.
ST. AUGUSTINE.
A.D. 354-430.
PART I.
The church in the north of Africa has hardly been mentioned since the time of St. Cyprian.[28] But we must now look towards it again, since in the days of St. Chrysostom it produced a man who was perhaps the greatest of all the old Christian fathers—St. Augustine.
Augustine was born at Thagaste, a city of Numidia, in the year 354. His mother, Monica, was a pious Christian, but his father, Patricius, was a heathen, and a man of no very good character. Monica was resolved to bring up her son in the true faith: she entered him as a catechumen of the Church when a little child, and carefully taught him as much of religious things as a child could learn. But he was not then baptized, because (as has been mentioned already)[29] people were accustomed in those days to put off baptism, out of fear lest they should afterwards fall into sin, and so should lose the blessing of the sacrament. This, as we know, was a mistake, but it was a very common practice nevertheless.
When Augustine was a boy, he was one day suddenly taken ill, so that he seemed likely to die. Remembering what his mother had taught him, he begged that he might be baptized, and preparations were made for the purpose; but all at once he began to grow better, and the baptism was put off for the same reason as before.
As he grew up, he gave but little promise of what he was afterwards to become. Much of his time was spent in idleness; and through idleness he fell into bad company, and was drawn into sins of many kinds. When he was about seventeen, his father died. The good Monica had been much troubled by her husband's heathenism and misconduct, and had earnestly tried to convert him from his errors. She went about this wisely, not lecturing him or arguing with him in a way that might have set him more against the Gospel, but trying rather to show him the beauty of Christian faith by her own loving, gentle, and dutiful behaviour. And at length her pains were rewarded by seeing him before his death profess himself a believer, and receive Christian baptism.
Monica was left rather badly off at her husband's death. But a rich neighbour was kind enough to help her in the expense of finishing her son's education, and the young man himself now began to show something of the great talents which God had been pleased to bestow on him. Unhappily, however, he sank deeper and deeper in vice, and poor Monica was bitterly grieved by his ways. A book which he happened to read led him to feel something of the shamefulness and wretchedness of his courses; but, as it was a heathen book (although written by one of the wisest of the heathens, Cicero), it could not show him by what means he might be able to reach to a higher life. He looked into Scripture, in the hope of finding instruction there; but he was now in that state of mind to which, as St. Paul says (1 Cor. i. 23), the preaching of Christ sounds like "foolishness;" so that he fancied himself to be above learning anything from a book so plain and homely as the Bible then seemed to him, and he set out in search of some other teaching. And a very strange sort of teaching he met with.
About a hundred years before this time, a man named Manes appeared in Persia (A.D. 270), and preached a religion which he pretended to have received from Heaven, but which was really made up by himself, from a mixture of Christian and heathen notions. It was something like the doctrines which had been before taught by the Gnostics,[30] and was as wild nonsense as can well be imagined. He taught that there were two gods—a good god of light, and a bad god of darkness. And he divided his followers into two classes, the lower of which were called hearers, while the higher were called elect. These elect were supposed to be very strict in their lives. They were not to eat flesh at all;—they might not even gather the fruits of the earth, or pluck a herb with their own hands. They were supported and were served by the hearers; and they took a very odd way of showing their gratitude to these; for it is said that when one of the elect ate a piece of bread, he made this speech to it:—"It was not I who reaped or ground or baked thee; may they who did so be reaped and ground and baked in their turn!" And it was believed that the poor "hearers" would after death become corn, and have to go through the mill and the oven, until they should have suffered enough to clear away their offences and make them fit for the blessedness of the elect.
The Manichæans (as the followers of Manes were called) soon found their way into Africa, where they gained many converts; and, although laws were often made against their heresy by the emperors, it continued to spread secretly; for they used to hide their opinions, when there was any danger, so that persons who were really Manichæans pretended to be Catholic Christians, and there was some of them even among the monks and clergy of the Church.
In the humour in which Augustine now was, this strange sect took his fancy; for the Manichæans pretended to be wiser than any one else, and laughed at all submission to doctrines which had been settled by the Church. So Augustine at twenty became a Manichæan, and for nine years was one of the hearers,—for he never got to be one of the elect, or to know much about their secrets. But before he had been very long in the sect, he began to notice some things which shocked him in the behaviour of the elect, who professed the greatest strictness. In short, he could not but see that their strictness was all a pretence, and that they were really a very worthless set of men. And he found out, too, that, besides bad conduct, there was a great deal very bad and disgusting in the opinions of the Manichæans, which he had not known of at first. After learning all this, he did not know what to turn to, and he seems for a time to have believed nothing at all,—which is a wretched state of mind indeed, and so he found it.
Augustine now set up as a teacher at Carthage, the chief city of Africa; but among the students there he found a set of wild young men who called themselves Eversors—a name which meant that they turned everything topsy-turvy; and Augustine was so much troubled by the behaviour of these unruly lads, that he resolved to leave Carthage and go to Rome. Monica, as we may easily suppose, had been much distressed by his wanderings, but she never ceased to pray that he might be brought round again. One day she went to a learned bishop, who was much in the habit of arguing with people who were in error, and begged that he would speak to her son; but the good man understood Augustine's case, and saw that to talk to him while he was in such a state of mind would only make him more self-wise than he was already. "Let him alone awhile," he said: "only pray God for him, and he will of himself find out by reading how wrong the Manichæans are, and how impious their doctrine is." And then he told her that he had himself been brought up as a Manichæan, but that his studies had shown him the error of the sect, and he had left it. Monica was not satisfied with this, and went on begging, even with tears, that the bishop would talk with her son. But he said to her, "Go thy ways, and may God bless thee; for it is not possible that the child of so many tears should perish." And Monica took his words as if they had been a voice from Heaven, and cherished the hope which they held out to her.
Monica was much against Augustine's plan of removing to Rome; but he slipped away and went on shipboard while she was praying in a chapel by the seaside, which was called after the name of St. Cyprian. Having got to Rome, he opened a school there, as he had done at Carthage; but he found that the Roman youth, although they were not so rough as those of Carthage, had another very awkward habit—namely, that, after having heard a number of his lectures, they disappeared without paying for them. While he was in distress on this account, the office of a public teacher at Milan was offered to him, and he was very glad to take it. While at Rome, he had a bad illness; but he did not at that time wish or ask for baptism as he had done when sick in his childhood.
The great St. Ambrose was then Bishop of Milan. Augustine had heard so much of his fame, that he went often to hear him, out of curiosity to know whether the bishop were really as fine a preacher as he was said to be; but by degrees, as he listened, he felt a greater and greater interest. He found, from what Ambrose said, that the objections by which the Manichæans had set him against the Gospel were all mistaken; and, when Monica joined him, after he had been some time at Milan, she had the delight of finding that he had given up the Manichæan sect, and was once more a catechumen of the Church.
Augustine had still to fight his way through many difficulties. He had learnt that the best and highest wisdom of the heathens could not satisfy his mind and heart; and he now turned again to St. Paul's epistles, and found that Scripture was something very different from what he had supposed it to be in the pride of his youth. He was filled with grief and shame on account of the vileness of his past life; and these feelings were made still stronger by the accounts which a friend gave him of the strict and self-denying ways of Antony and other monks. One day, as he lay in the garden of his lodging, with his mind tossed to and fro by anxious thoughts, so that he even wept in his distress, he heard a voice, like that of a child, singing over and over "Take up and read! take up and read!" At first he fancied that the voice came from some child at play; but he could not think of any childish game in which such words were used. And then he remembered how St. Antony had been struck by the words of the Gospel which he heard in church;[31] and it seemed to him that the voice, wherever it might come from, was a call of the same kind to himself. So he eagerly seized the book of St. Paul's Epistles, which was lying by him, and, as he opened it, the first words on which his eyes fell were these,—"Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof" (Rom. xiii. 13, 14). And, as he read, the words all at once sank deeply into his heart, and from that moment he felt himself another man. As soon as he could do so without being particularly noticed, he gave up his office of professor and went into the country, where he spent some months in the company of his mother and other friends; and at the following Easter (A.D. 387), he was baptized by St. Ambrose. The good Monica had now seen the desire of her heart fulfilled; and she soon after died in peace, as she was on her way back to Africa, in company with her son.
Augustine, after her death, spent some time at Rome, where he wrote a book against the Manichæans, and then, returning to his native place Thagaste, he gave himself up for three years to devotion and study. In those days, it was not uncommon that persons who were thought likely to be useful to the Church should be seized on and ordained, whether they liked it or not; and if they were expected to make very strong objections, their mouths were even stopped by force. Now Augustine's fame grew so great, that he was afraid lest something of this kind should be done to him; and he did not venture to let himself be seen in any town where the bishopric was vacant, lest he should be obliged to become bishop against his will. He thought, however, that he was safe in accepting an invitation to Hippo, because it was provided with a bishop named Valerius. But, as he was one day listening to the bishop's sermon, Valerius began to say that his church was in want of another presbyter; whereupon the people laid hold of Augustine, and presented him to the bishop, who ordained him without heeding his objections (A.D. 391). And four years later (A.D. 395), he was consecrated a bishop, to assist Valerius, who died soon after.
Augustine was bishop of Hippo for five-and-thirty years, and, although there were many other sees of greater importance in Africa, his uncommon talents, and his high character, made him the foremost man of the African church. He was a zealous and exemplary bishop, and he wrote a great number of valuable books of many kinds. But the most interesting of them all is one which may be read in English, and is of no great length—namely, the "Confessions," in which he gives an account of the wanderings through which he had been brought into the way of truth and peace, and humbly gives thanks to God, whose gracious providence had guarded and guided him.
Augustine had a great many disputes with heretics and others who separated from the Church, or tried to corrupt its doctrine. But only two of his controversies need be mentioned here. One of these was with the Donatists, and the other was with the Pelagians.
The sect of the Donatists had arisen soon after the end of the last heathen persecution, and was now nearly a hundred years old. We have seen that St. Cyprian had a great deal of trouble with people who fancied that, if a man were put to death, or underwent any other considerable suffering, for the name of Christ, he deserved to be held in great honour, and his wishes were to be attended to by other Christians, whatever his character and motives might have been.[32] The same spirit which led to this mistake continued in Africa after St. Cyprian's time; and thus, when the persecution began there under Diocletian and Maximian[33] (A.D. 303), great numbers rushed into danger, in the hope of being put to death, and of so obtaining at once the blessedness and the glory of martyrdom. Many of these people were weary of their lives, or in some other respect were not of such characters that they could be reckoned as true Christian martyrs. The wise fathers of the Church always disapproved of such foolhardy doings, and would not allow people, who acted in a way so unlike our Lord and His apostle St. Paul, to be considered as martyrs; and Mensurius, who was the bishop of Carthage, stedfastly set his face against all such things.
One of the ways by which the persecutors hoped to put down the Gospel, was to get hold of all the copies of the Scriptures, and to burn them; and they required the clergy to deliver them up. But most of the officers who had to execute the orders of the emperors did not know a Bible from any other book; and it is said that, when some of them came to Mensurius, and asked him to deliver up his books, he gave them a quantity of books written by heretics, which he had collected (perhaps with the intention of burning them himself), and that all the while he had put the Scriptures safely out of the way, until the tyranny of the heathens should be overpast. When the persecution was at an end, some of the party whom he had offended by setting himself against their wrong notions as to martyrdom, brought up this matter against the bishop. They said that his account of it was false; that the books which he had given up were not what he said, but that he had really given up the Scriptures; and that, even if his story were true, he had done wrong in using such deceit. They gave the name of traditors,[34] (or, as we should say, traitors,) to those who confessed that they had been frightened into giving up the Scriptures; and they were for showing no mercy to any traditor, however much he might repent of his weakness.
This severe party, then, tried to get up an opposition to Mensurius. They found, however, that they could make nothing of it. But when he died, and when Cæcilian, who had been his archdeacon and his righthand man, was chosen bishop in his stead, these people made a great outcry, and set up another bishop of their own against him. All sorts of people who had taken offence at Cæcilian or Mensurius thought this a fine opportunity for having their revenge; and thus a strong party was formed. It was greatly helped by the wealth of a lady named Lucilla, whom Cæcilian had reproved for the superstitious habit of kissing a bone, which she supposed to have belonged to some martyr, before communicating at the Lord's table. The first bishop of the party was one Majorinus, who had been a servant of some sort to Lucilla; and, when Majorinus was dead, they set up a second bishop, named Donatus, after whom they were called Donatists. This Donatus was a clever and a learned man, and lived very strictly; but he was exceedingly proud and ill-tempered, and used very violent language against all who differed from him; and his sect copied his pride and bitterness. Many of them, however, while they professed to be extremely strict, neglected the plainer and humbler duties of Christian life.
The Donatists said that every member of their sect must be a saint: whereas our Lord himself had declared that evil members would always be mixed with the good in His Church on earth, like tares growing in a field of wheat, or bad fishes mixed with good ones in a net; and that the separation of the good from the bad would not take place until the end of the world (St. Matt. xiii. 24-30, 36-43, 47-50). And they said that their own sect was the only true Church of Christ, although they had no congregations out of Africa, except one which was set up to please a rich lady in Spain, and another at Rome. Whenever they made a convert from the Church, they baptized him afresh, as if his former baptism were good for nothing. They pretended to work miracles, and to see visions; and they made a very great deal of Donatus himself, so as even to pay him honours which ought not to have been given to any child of man; for they sang hymns to him, and swore by his gray hairs.
Shortly after Constantine got possession of Africa by his victory over Maxentius, and declared liberty of religion to the Christians (A.D. 312-313),[35] the Donatists applied to him against the Catholics;[36] and it was curious that they should have been the first to call in the emperor as judge in such a matter, because they were afterwards very violent against the notion of an earthly sovereign's having any right to concern himself with the management of religious affairs. Constantine tried to settle the question by desiring some bishops to judge between the parties; and these bishops gave judgment in favour of the Catholics. The Donatists were dissatisfied, and asked for a new trial; whereupon Constantine gathered a council for the purpose at Arles, in France (A.D. 314). This was the greatest council that had at that time been seen: there were about two hundred bishops at it, and among them were some from Britain. Here again the decision was against the Donatists, and they thereupon begged the emperor himself to examine their case; which he did, and once more condemned them (A.D. 316). Some severe laws were then made against them; their churches were taken away; many of them were banished, and were deprived of all that they had; and they were even threatened with death, although none of them suffered it during Constantine's reign.
The emperor, after a while, saw that they were growing wilder and wilder, that punishment had no effect on them, except to make them more unmanageable, and that they were not to be treated as reasonable people. He then did away with the laws against them, and tried to keep them quiet by kindness; and in the last years of his reign his hands were so full of the Arian quarrels nearer home that he had little leisure to attend to the affairs of the Donatists.
After the death of Constantius, Africa fell to the share of his youngest son, Constans, who sent some officers into the country with orders to make presents to the Donatists, in the hope of thus bringing them to join the Church. But Donatus flew out into a great fury when he heard of this—"What has the emperor to do with the Church?" he asked; and he forbade the members of his sect (which was what he meant by "the church") to touch any of the money that was offered to them.
By this time a stranger set of wild people called Circumcellions had appeared among the Donatists. They got their name from two Latin words which mean around the cottages; because, instead of maintaining themselves by honest labour, they used to go about, like sturdy beggars, to the cottages of the country people, and demand whatever they wanted. They were of the poorest class, and very ignorant, but full of zeal for their religion. But, instead of being "pure and peaceable" (St. James iii. 17), this religion was fierce and savage, and allowed them to go on, without any check, in drunkenness and all sorts of misconduct. Their women, whom they called "sacred virgins," were as bad as the men, or worse. Bands of both sexes used to rove about the country, and keep the peaceable inhabitants in constant fear. As they went along, they sang or shouted "Praises be to God!" and this song, says St. Augustine, was heard with greater dread than the roaring of a lion. At first they thought that they must not use swords, on account of what our Lord had said to Peter (St. Matt. xxvi. 52); so they carried heavy clubs, which they called Israels; and with these they used to beat people, and often so severely as to kill them. But afterwards the Circumcellions got over their scruples, and armed themselves not only with swords, but with other weapons of steel, such as spears and hatchets. They attacked and plundered the churches of the Catholics, and the houses of the clergy; and they handled any clergyman whom they could get hold of very roughly. Besides this, they were fond of interfering in all sorts of affairs. People did not dare to ask for the payment of debts, or to reprove their slaves for misbehaviour, lest the Circumcellions should be called in upon them. And things got to such a pass, that the officers of the law were afraid to do their duty.
But the Circumcellions were as furious against themselves as against others. They used to court death in all manner of ways. Sometimes they stopped travellers on the roads, and desired to be killed, threatening to kill the travellers if they refused. And if they met a judge going on his rounds, they threatened him with death if he would not hand them over to his officers for execution. One judge whom they assailed in this way played them a pleasant trick. He seemed quite willing to humour them, and told his officers to bind them as if for execution; and when he had thus made them harmless and helpless, instead of ordering them to be put to death, he turned them loose, leaving them to get themselves unbound as they could. Many Circumcellions drowned themselves, rushed into fire, or threw themselves from rocks and were dashed to pieces; but they would not put an end to themselves by hanging, because that was the death of the traditor (or traitor) Judas. The Donatists were not all so mad as these people, and some of their councils condemned the practice of self-murder. But it went on nevertheless, and those who made away with themselves, or got others to kill them in such ways as have been mentioned, were honoured as martyrs by the more violent part of the sect.
Constans made three attempts to win over the Donatists by presents, but they held out against all; and when the third attempt was made, in the year 347, by means of an officer named Macarius, the Circumcellions broke out into rebellion, and fought a battle with the emperor's troops. In this battle the Donatists were defeated, and two of their bishops, who had been busy in stirring up the rebels, were among the slain. Macarius then required the Donatists to join the Church, and threatened them with banishment if they should refuse, but they were still obstinate: and it would seem that they were treated hardly by the government, although the Catholic bishops tried to prevent it. Donatus himself and great numbers of his followers were sent into banishment; and for a time the sect appeared to have been put down.
Thus they remained until the death of the emperor Constantius (A.D. 361), and Donatus had died in the mean time. Julian, on succeeding to the empire, gave leave to all whom Constantius had banished on account of religion to return to their homes.[37] But the Donatists were not the better for this, as they had not been banished by Constantius, but by Constans, before Constantius got possession of Africa: so they petitioned the emperor that they might be recalled from banishment; and in their petition they spoke of Julian in a way which disagreed strangely with their general defiance of governments, and which was especially ill suited for one who had forsaken the Christian faith and was persecuting it at that very time. Julian granted their request, and forthwith they returned home in great triumph, and committed violent outrages against the Catholics. They took possession of a number of churches, and, professing to consider everything that had been used by the Catholics unclean, they washed the pavement, scraped the walls, burnt the communion-tables, melted the plate, and cast the holy sacrament to the dogs. They soon became strong throughout the whole north of Africa, and in one part of it, Numidia, they were stronger than the Catholics. After the death of Julian, laws were made against them from time to time, but do not seem to have been carried out. And although the Donatists quarrelled much among themselves, and split up into a number of parties, they were still very powerful in Augustine's day. In his own city of Hippo he found that they were more in number than the Catholics; and such was their bitter and pharisaical spirit that the bishop of the sect at Hippo would not let any of his people so much as bake for their Catholic neighbours.
Augustine did all that he could to make something of the Donatists, but it was mostly in vain. He could not get their bishops or clergy to argue with him. They pretended to call themselves "the children of the martyrs," on account of the troubles which their forefathers had gone through in the reign of Constans: and they said that the children of the martyrs could not stoop to argue with sinners and traditors. Although they professed that their sect was made up of perfect saints, they took in all sorts of worthless converts for the sake of swelling their numbers; whereas Augustine would not let any Donatists join the Church without inquiring into their characters, and, if he found that they had done anything for which they had been condemned by their sect to do penance, he insisted that they should go through a penance before being admitted into the Church.
But, notwithstanding the difficulties which he found in dealing with them, he and others succeeded in drawing over a great number of Donatists to the Church. And this made the Circumcellions so furious that they fell on the Catholic clergy whenever they could find them, and tried to do them all possible mischief. They beat and mangled some of them cruelly; they put out the eyes of some by throwing a mixture of lime and vinegar into their faces; and, among other things, they laid a plan for waylaying Augustine himself, which, however, he escaped, through the providence of God. Many reports of these savage doings were carried to the emperor, Honorius, and some of the sufferers appeared at his court to tell their own tale; whereupon the old laws against the sect were revived, and severe new laws were also made. In these even death was threatened against Donatists who should molest the Catholics; but Augustine begged that this penalty might be withdrawn, because the Catholic clergy, who knew more about the sect than any one else, would not give information against it, if the punishment of the Donatists were to be so great. And he and his brethren requested that the emperor would appoint a meeting to be held between the parties, in order that they might talk over their differences, and, if possible, might come to some agreement.
The emperor consented to do so; and a meeting took place accordingly, at Carthage, in 411, in the presence of a commissioner named Marcellinus. Two hundred and eighty-six Catholic bishops found their way to the city by degrees. But the Donatists, who were two hundred and seventy-nine in number, entered it in a body, thinking to make all the effect that they could by the show of a great procession. At the conference (or meeting), which lasted three days, the Donatists behaved with their usual pride and insolence. When Marcellinus begged them to sit down, they refused, because our Lord had stood before Pilate. On being again asked to seat themselves, they quoted a text from the Psalms, "I will not sit with the wicked" (Ps. xxvi. 5); meaning that the Catholics were the wicked, and that they themselves were too good to sit in such company. And when Augustine called them "brethren," they cried out in anger that they did not own any such brotherhood. They tried to throw difficulties in the way of arguing the question fairly; but on the third day their shifts would serve them no longer. Augustine then took the lead among the Catholics, and showed at great length both how wrongly the Donatists had behaved in the beginning of their separation from the Church, and how contrary to Scripture their principles were.
Marcellinus, who had been sent by the emperor to hear both parties, gave judgment in favour of the Catholics. Such of the Donatist bishops and clergy as would join the Church were allowed to keep possession of their places; but the others were to be banished. Augustine had at first been against the idea of trying to force people in matters of religion. But he saw that many were brought by these laws to join the Church, and after a time he came to think that such laws were good and useful; nay, he even tried to find a Scripture warrant for them in the text "Compel them to come in" (St. Luke xiv. 23). And thus, unhappily, this great and good man, was led to lend his name to the grievous error of thinking that force, or even persecution, may be used rightly, and with good effect, in matters of religion. It was one of the mistakes to which people are liable when they form their opinions without having the opportunity of seeing how things work in the long run, and on a large scale. We must regret that Augustine seemed in any way to countenance such means; but even although he erred in some measure as to this, we may be sure that he would have abhorred the cruelties which have since been done under pretence of maintaining the true religion, and of bringing people to embrace it.
While some of the Donatists were thus brought over to the Church, others became more outrageous than ever. Many of them grew desperate, and made away with themselves. One of their bishops threatened that, if he were required by force to join the Catholics, he would shut himself up in a church with his people, and that they would then set the building on fire and perish in the flames. There were many among the Donatists who would have been mad enough to do a thing of this kind; but it would seem that the bishop was not put to the trial which he expected.
The Donatists dwindled away from this time, and were little heard of after Augustine's days, although there were still some in Africa two hundred years later, as we learn from the letters of St. Gregory the Great.
Of all the disputes in which Augustine was engaged, that with the Pelagians was the most famous. The leader of these people, Pelagius, was a Briton. His name would mean, either in Latin or in Greek, a man of the sea; and it is said that his British name was Morgan—meaning the same as the Greek or Latin name. Pelagius was the first native of our own island who gained fame as a writer or as a divine; but his fame was not of a desirable kind, as it arose from the errors which he ran into. He was a man of learning, and of strict life; and at Rome, where he spent many years, he was much respected, until in his old age he began to set forth opinions which brought him into the repute of a heretic. At Rome he became acquainted with a man named Celestius, who is said by some to have been an Italian, while others suppose him an Irishman. It is not known whether Celestius learnt his opinions from Pelagius, or whether each of them had come to think in the same way before they knew one another. But, however this may be, they became great friends, and joined in teaching the same errors.
Augustine, as we have seen, had passed through such trials of the spirit that he thoroughly felt the need of God's gracious help in order to do, or even to will, any good thing. Pelagius, on the contrary, seems to have always gone on steadily in the way of his religion. Now this was really a reason why he should have thanked that grace and mercy of God which had spared him the dangers and the terrible sufferings which others have to bear in the course of their spiritual life. But unhappily Pelagius overlooked the help of grace. He owned, indeed, that all is from God; but, instead of understanding that the power of doing any good, or of avoiding any sin, is the especial gift of the Holy Spirit, he fancied that the power of living without sin was given to us by God as a part of our nature. He saw that some people made a wrong use of the doctrine of our natural corruption. He saw that, instead of throwing the blame of their sins on their own neglect of the grace which is offered to us through Christ, they spoke of the weakness and corruption of their nature as if these were an excuse for their sins. This was, indeed, a grievous error, and one which Pelagius would have done well to warn people against. But, in condemning it, he went far wrong in an opposite way: he said that man's nature is not corrupt; that it is nothing the worse for the fall of our first parents; that man can be good by his own natural power, without needing any higher help; that men might live without sin, and that many had so lived. These notions of his are mentioned and are condemned in the ninth Article of our own Church, where it is said that "Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, as the Pelagians do vainly talk" [that is to say, original sin is not merely the actual imitation of Adam's sin]; "but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness" [that is, he is very far gone from that righteousness which Adam had at the first]. And then it is said in the next Article—"The condition of man, after the fall of Adam, is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasing and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us [or going before us], that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will." Thus at every step there is a need of grace from above to help us on the way of salvation.
After Rome had been taken by the Goths, in the year 410,[38] Pelagius and Celestius passed over into Africa, from which Pelagius, after a short stay, went into the Holy Land. Celestius tried to get himself ordained by the African church; but objections were made to him, and a council was held which condemned and excommunicated him. Augustine was too busy with the Donatists to attend this council; but he was very much alarmed by the errors of the new teachers, and soon took the lead in writing against them, and in opposing them by other means.
Pelagius was examined by some councils in the Holy Land, and contrived to persuade them that there was nothing wrong in his doctrines. He and Celestius even got a bishop of Rome, Zosimus, to own them as sound in the faith, and to reprove the African bishops for condemning them. The secret of this was, that Pelagius used words in a crafty way, which neither the synods in the Holy Land nor the bishop of Rome suspected. When he was charged with denying the need of grace, he said that he owned it to be necessary; but, instead of using the word grace in its right meaning, to signify the working of the Holy Spirit on the heart, he used it as a name for other means by which God helps us; such as the power which Pelagius supposed to be bestowed on us as a part of our nature; the forgiveness of our sins in baptism; the offer of salvation; the knowledge and instruction given to us through Holy Scripture, or in other ways. By such tricks the Pelagians imposed on the bishop of Rome and others; but the Africans, with Augustine at their head, stood firm. They steadily maintained that Pelagius and Celestius were unsound in their opinions; they told Zosimus that he had no right to meddle with Africa, and that he had been altogether deceived by the heretics. So, after a while, the bishop of Rome took quite the opposite line, and condemned Pelagius with his followers; and they were also condemned in several councils, of which the most famous was the General Council of Ephesus, held in the year 431. Augustine did great service in opposing these dangerous doctrines; but in doing so, he said some things as to God's choosing of his elect, and predestinating them (or marking them out beforehand) to salvation, which are rather startling, and might lead to serious error. But as to this deep and difficult subject, I shall content myself with quoting a few words from our Church's seventeenth Article—"We must receive God's promises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture; and in our doings, that will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared to us in the word of God."
Augustine was still busied in the Pelagian controversy when a fearful calamity burst upon his country. The commander of the troops in Africa, Boniface, had been an intimate friend of his, and had been much under his influence. A rival of Boniface, Aëtius, persuaded the empress, Placidia, who governed in the name of her young son, Valentinian the Third, to recall the general from Africa; and at the same time he persuaded Boniface to disobey the order, telling him that his ruin was intended. Boniface, who was a man of open and generous mind, did not suspect the villany of Aëtius; and, as the only means of saving himself, he rebelled against the emperor, and invited the Vandals from Spain to invade Africa. These Vandals were a savage nation, which had overrun part of Spain about twenty years before. They now gladly accepted Boniface's invitation, and passed in great numbers into Africa, where the Moors joined them, and the Donatists eagerly seized the opportunity of avenging themselves on the Catholics, by assisting the invaders. The country was laid waste, and the Catholic clergy were treated with especial cruelty, both by the Vandals (who were Arians) and by the Donatists.
Augustine had urged Boniface to return to his duty as a subject of the empire. Boniface, who was disgusted by the savage doings of the Vandals, and had discovered the tricks by which Aëtius had tempted him to revolt, begged the Vandal leader Genseric to return to Spain; but he found that he had rashly raised a power which he could not manage, and the barbarians laughed at his entreaties. As he could not prevail with them by words, he fought a battle with them; but he was defeated, and he then shut himself up in Augustine's city, Hippo.
During all these troubles Augustine was very active in writing letters of exhortation to his brethren, and in endeavouring to support them under their trials. And when Hippo was crowded by a multitude of all kinds, who had fled to its walls for shelter, he laboured without ceasing among them. In June, 430, the Vandals laid siege to the place, and soon after, the bishop fell sick in consequence of his labours. He felt that his end was near, and he wished, during his short remaining time, to be free from interruption in preparing for death. He, therefore, would not allow his friends to see him, except at the hours when he took food or medicine. He desired that the penitential psalms—(the seven psalms which are read in church on Ash-Wednesday, and which especially express sorrow for sin)—should be hung up within his sight; and he read them over and over, shedding floods of tears as he read. On the 28th of August, 430, he was taken to his rest, and in the following year Hippo fell into the hands of the Vandals, who thus became masters of the whole of northern Africa.
NOTES
[ [34]This means persons who give up or betray.
CHAPTER XXII.
COUNCILS OF EPHESUS AND CHALCEDON.
A.D. 431-451.
Augustine died just as a great council was about to be held in the East. In preparing for this council, a compliment was paid to him which was not paid to any other person; for, whereas it was usual to invite the chief bishop only of each province to such meetings, and to leave him to choose which of his brethren should accompany him, a special invitation was sent to Augustine, although he was not even a metropolitan,[39] but only bishop of a small town. This shows what fame he had gained, and in what respect his name was held, even in the Eastern church.
The object of calling the council was to inquire into the opinions of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople. It would have been well for it if it had enjoyed the benefit of the great and good Augustine's presence; for its proceedings were carried on in such a way that it is not pleasant to read of them. But, whatever may have been the faults of those who were active in the council, it laid down clearly the truth which Nestorius was charged with denying—that (as is said in the Athanasian creed) our blessed Lord, "although He be God and man, yet is He not two, but one Christ;" and this council, which was held at Ephesus in the year 431, is reckoned as the third general council.
Some years after it, a disturbance arose about a monk of Constantinople, named Eutyches, who had been very zealous against Nestorius, and now ran into errors of an opposite kind. Another council was held at Ephesus in 449; but Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, and a number of disorderly monks who were favourable to Eutyches, behaved in such a furious manner at this assembly, that, instead of being considered as a general council, it is known by a name which means a meeting of robbers. But two years later, when a new emperor had succeeded to the government of the east, another general council was held at Chalcedon (A.D. 451); and there the doctrines of Eutyches were condemned, and Dioscorus was deprived of his bishopric. This council, which was the fourth of the general councils, was attended by six hundred and thirty bishops. It laid down the doctrine that our Lord is "One, not by conversion [or turning] of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God: One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person; for, as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ."
According, then, to these two councils, which were held against Nestorius and Eutyches, we are to believe that our blessed Lord is really God and really man. The Godhead and the manhood are not mixed together in Him, so as to make something which would be neither the one nor the other (which is what the creed means by "confusion of substance"); but they are in Him distinct from each other, just as the soul and the body are distinct in man; and yet they are not two Persons, but are joined together in one Person, just as the soul and the body are joined in one man. All this may perhaps be rather hard for young readers to understand, but the third and fourth general councils are too important to be passed over, even in a little book like this; and, even if what has been said here should not be quite understood, it will at least show that all those distinctions in the Athanasian creed mean something, and that they were not set forth without some reason, but in order to meet errors which had actually been taught.
I may mention here two other things which were settled by the Council of Chalcedon—that it gave the bishops of Constantinople authority over Thrace, Asia, and Pontus; and that it raised Jerusalem, which until then had been only an ordinary bishopric, to have authority of the same kind over the Holy Land. These chief bishops are now called patriarchs, and there were thus five patriarchs—namely, the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The map will show you how these patriarchates were divided;[40] but there were still some Christian countries which did not belong to any of them.
Having thus mentioned the title of patriarchs, I may explain here the use of another title which we hear much oftener,—I mean the title of pope. The proper meaning of it is father; in short, it is nothing else than the word papa, which children among ourselves use in speaking to their fathers. This title of pope (or father), then, was at first given to all bishops; but, by degrees, it came to be confined in its use; so that, in the east, only the bishops of Rome and Alexandria were called by it, while in the west it was given to the bishop or patriarch of Rome alone.
NOTES
[ [40]Read here the Explanation of the Map, at the end of the volume.
CHAPTER XXIII.
FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE.
A.D. 451-476.
The empire of the west was now fast sinking. One weak prince was at the head of it after another, and the spirit of the old Romans, who had conquered the world, had quite died out. Immense hosts of barbarous nations poured in from the north. The Goths, under Alaric, who took Rome by siege, in the reign of Honorius, have been already mentioned.[41] Forty years later, Attila, King of the Huns, who was called "The scourge of God," kept both the east and the west in terror. In the year 451, he advanced as far as Orleans, and, after having for some time besieged it, he made a breach in the wall of the city. The soldiers of the garrison, and such of the citizens as could fight, had done their best in the defence of the walls; those who could not bear arms betook themselves to the churches, and were occupied in anxious prayer. The bishop, Anianus, had before earnestly begged that troops might be sent to the relief of the place; and he had posted a man on a tower, with orders to look out in the direction from which succour might be hoped for. The watchman twice returned to the bishop without any tidings of comfort; but the third time he said that he had noticed a little cloud of dust as far off as he could see. "It is the aid of God!" said the bishop; and the people who heard him took up the words, and shouted, "It is the aid of God!" The little cloud, from being "like a man's hand" (1 Kings xviii. 44), grew larger and drew nearer; the dust was cleared away by the wind, and the glitter of spears and armour was seen; and just as the Huns had broken through the wall, and were rushing into the city, greedy of plunder and bloodshed, an army of Romans and allies arrived and forced them to retreat. After having been thus driven from Orleans, Attila was defeated in a great battle near Châlons, on the river Marne, and withdrew into Germany.
In the following year (452), Attila invaded Italy, where he caused great consternation. But when the bishop of Rome, Leo the Great, went to his camp near Mantua, and entreated him to spare the country, Attila was so much struck by the bishop's venerable appearance and his powerful words, that he agreed to withdraw on receiving a large sum of money. A few months later he suddenly died, and his kingdom soon fell to pieces.
By degrees, the Romans lost Britain, Gaul, Spain, and Africa; and Italy was all that was left of the western empire.
Genseric, who, as has been mentioned,[42] had led the Vandals into Africa, long kept the Mediterranean in constant dread of his fleets. Three years after the invasion of Italy by Attila, he appeared at the mouth of the Tiber (A.D. 455), having been invited by the empress Eudoxia, who wished to be revenged on her husband, in consequence of his having told her that he had been the cause of her former husband's death. As the Vandals approached the walls of Rome, the bishop, Leo, went forth at the head of his clergy. He pleaded with Genseric as he had before pleaded with Attila, and he brought him to promise that the city should not be burnt, and that the lives of the inhabitants should be spared; but Genseric gave up the place for fourteen days to plunder, and the sufferings of the people were frightful. The Vandal king returned to Africa with a vast quantity of booty, and with a great number of captives, among whom were the unfortunate empress and her two daughters. On this occasion the bishop of Carthage, Deogratias, behaved with noble charity;—he sold the gold and silver plate of the church, and with the price he redeemed some of the captives, and relieved the sufferings of others. Two of the churches were turned into hospitals. The sick were comfortably lodged, and were plentifully supplied with food and medicines; and the good bishop, old and infirm as he was, visited them often, by night as well as by day, and spoke words of kindness and of Christian consolation to them.
This behaviour of Deogratias was the more to his honour, because his own flock was suffering severely from the oppression of the Vandals, who, as we have already seen,[43] were Arians. Genseric treated the Catholics of Africa very tyrannically; his son and successor, Hunneric, was still more cruel to them; and, as long as the Vandals held possession of Africa, the persecution, in one shape or another, was carried on almost without ceasing.
The last emperor of the west, Augustulus, was put down in the year 476, and a barbarian prince named Odoacer became king of Italy.
NOTES
CHAPTER XXIV.
CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS—CHRISTIANITY IN BRITAIN.
As the old empire of Rome disappears, the modern kingdoms of Europe begin to come to view; and we may now look at the progress of the Gospel among the nations of the west.
The barbarians who got possession of France, Spain, South Germany, and other parts of the empire, were soon converted to a sort of Christianity; but, unfortunately, it was not the true Catholic faith. I have told you[44] that Ulfilas, "the Moses of the Goths," led his people into the errors of Arianism. As it was from the Goths that the missionaries generally went forth to convert the other northern nations, these nations, too, for the most part, became Arians; while some of them, after having been converted by Catholics, afterwards fell into Arianism. It is curious to observe how opposite the course of conversion was among these nations to what it had been in earlier times. In the Roman empire, the Gospel worked its way up from the poor and simple people who were the first to believe it, until the emperor himself became at length a convert. But among the nations which now overran the western empire, the missionaries usually began by making a convert of the prince; when the prince was converted, his subjects followed him to the font; and if he changed from Catholicism to Arianism, or from Arianism to Catholicism, the people did the same. In the course of time, all the nations which had professed Arianism, were brought over to the true faith. The last who held out were the Goths in Spain, who gave up their errors at a great council which was held at Toledo in 589; and the Lombards, in the north of Italy, who were converted in the early part of the following century.
Our own island was little troubled by Arianism, and St. Athanasius bears witness to the firmness of the British bishops in the right faith. But Pelagius, as we have seen,[45] was himself a Briton; and, although he did not himself try to spread his errors here, one of his followers, named Agricola, brought them into Britain, and did a great deal of mischief (A.D. 429). The Britons had been long under the power of the Romans; but, as the empire grew weaker, the Romans found that they could not afford to keep up an army here; and they had given up Britain in the year 409. But after this, when the Picts and Scots of the north invaded the southern part of the island (or what we now call England), the Britons in their alarm used to beg the assistance of the Romans against them. And it would seem as if the British clergy had come to depend on the help of others in much the same way; for when they found what havoc the Pelagian Agricola was making among their people, they sent over into Gaul, and begged that the bishops of that country would send them aid against him.
Two bishops, German of Auxerre, and Lupus of Troyes, were sent accordingly by a council to which the petition of the Britons had been made. These two could speak a language which was near enough to the British to be understood by the Britons; it was something like the Welsh, or the Irish, or like the Gaelic, which is spoken in the highlands of Scotland (for all these languages are much alike). Their preaching had a great effect on the people, and their holy lives preached still better than their sermons; they disputed with the Pelagian teachers at Verulam, the town where St. Alban was martyred,[46] and which now takes its name from him; and they succeeded for the time in putting down the heresy.
It is said that while German and Lupus were in this country, the Picts and Saxons joined in invading it; and that the Britons, finding their army unfit to fight the enemy, sent to beg the assistance of the two Gaulish bishops. So German and Lupus went to the British army, and joined it just before Easter. A great number of the soldiers were baptized at Easter, and German put himself at their head. The enemy came on, expecting an easy victory, but the bishops thrice shouted Hallelujah! and all the army took up the shout, which was echoed from the mountains again and again, so that the pagans were struck with terror, and expected the mountains to fall on them. They threw down their arms, and ran away, leaving a great quantity of spoil behind them, and many of them rushed into a river, where they were drowned. The place where this victory is said to have been gained is still pointed out in Flintshire, and is known by a Welsh name, which means, "German's Field." Pelagianism began to revive in Britain some years later, but St. German came over a second time, and once more put it down.
But soon after this, the Saxons came into Britain. It is supposed that Hengist and Horsa landed in Kent in the year 449; and other chiefs followed, with their fierce heathen warriors. There was a struggle between these and the Britons, which lasted a hundred years, until at length the invaders got the better, and the land was once more overspread by heathenism, except where the Britons kept up their Christianity in the mountainous districts of the west,—Cumberland, Wales, and Cornwall. You shall hear by-and-by how the Gospel was introduced among the Saxons.
NOTES
CHAPTER XXV.
SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.
The only thing which seems to be settled as to the religious history of Scotland in these times, is, that a bishop named Ninian preached among the Southern Picts between the years 412 and 432, and established a see at Whithorn, in Galloway. But in the year of St. Ninian's death, a far more famous missionary, St. Patrick, who is called "the Apostle of Ireland," began his labours in that island.
It is a question whether Patrick was born in Scotland, at a place called Kirkpatrick, near the river Clyde, or in France, near Boulogne. But wherever it may have been, his birth took place about the year 387. His father was a deacon of the church, his grandfather was a presbyter, and thus Patrick had the opportunities of a religious training from his infancy. He did not, however, use these opportunities so well as he might have done; but it pleased God to bring him to a better mind by the way of affliction.
When Patrick was about sixteen years old, he was carried off by some pirates (or sea-robbers), and was sold to a heathen prince in Ireland, where he was set to keep cattle, and had to bear great hardships. But "there," says he, "it was that the Lord brought me to a sense of the unbelief of my heart, that I might call my sins to remembrance, and turn with all my heart to the Lord, who regarded my low estate, and, taking pity on my youth and ignorance, watched over me before I knew Him or had sense to discern between good and evil, and counselled me and comforted me as a father doth a son. I was employed every day in feeding cattle, and often in the day I used to betake myself to prayer; and the love of God thus grew stronger and stronger, and His faith and fear increased in me, so that in a single day I could utter as many as a hundred prayers, and in the night almost as many, and I used to remain in the woods and on the mountains, and would rise for prayer before daylight, in the midst of snow and ice and rain; and I felt no harm from it, nor was I ever unwilling, because my heart was hot within me. I was not from my childhood a believer in the only God, but continued in death and in unbelief until I was severely chastened; and in truth I have been humbled by hunger and nakedness, and it was my lot to go about in Ireland every day sore against my will, until I was almost worn out. But this proved rather a blessing to me, because by means of it I have been corrected of the Lord, and He has fitted me for being what it once seemed unlikely that I should be, so that I should concern myself about the salvation of others, whereas I used to have no such thoughts even for myself."[47]
After six years of captivity, Patrick was restored to his own country. It is said that he then travelled a great deal; and he became a presbyter of the Church. He was carried off captive a second time, but this captivity did not last long, and he afterwards lived with his parents, who begged him never to leave them again. But he thought that in a vision or dream he saw a man inviting him to Ireland, as St. Paul saw in the night a man of Macedonia, saying to him, "Come over into Macedonia and help us" (Acts xvi. 9). And Patrick was resolved to preach the Gospel in the land where he had been a captive in his youth. His friends got about him, and entreated him not to cast himself among the savage and heathen Irish. One of them, who was most familiar with him, when there seemed no hope of shaking his purpose, went so far as to tell of some sin which Patrick had committed in his boyhood, thirty years before. It was hoped that when this sin of his early days was known (whatever it may have been) it would prevent his being consecrated as a bishop. But Patrick broke through all difficulties, and was consecrated bishop of the Irish in the year 432.
There had already been some Christians in that country, and a missionary named Palladius had lately attempted to labour there, but had allowed himself to be soon discouraged, and had withdrawn. But Patrick had more zeal and patience than Palladius, and gave up all the remainder of his life to the Irish, so that he would not even allow himself the pleasure of paying a visit to his native country. He was often in great danger, both from the priests of the old Irish heathenism, and from the barbarous princes who were under their influences. But he carried on his work faithfully, and had the comfort of seeing it crowned with abundant success. His death took place on the 17th of March, 493.
The greater number of the Irish are now Romanists, and fancy that St. Patrick was so too, and that he was sent by the Pope to Ireland. But he has left writings which clearly prove that this is quite untrue. And moreover, although the bishops of Rome had been advancing in power, and although corruptions were growing on the Church in his time, yet neither the claims of these bishops, nor the other corruptions of the Roman Church, had then reached anything like their present height. Let us hope and pray that God may be pleased to deliver our Irish brethren of the Romish communion from the bondage of ignorance and error in which they are now unhappily held!
The Church continued to flourish in Ireland after St. Patrick's death, and learning found a home there, while wars and conquests banished it from most other countries of the west. In the year 565, the Irish Church sent forth a famous missionary named Columba, who, with twelve companions, went into Scotland. He preached among the Northern Picts, and founded a monastery in one of the western islands, which from him got the name of Icolumbkill (that is to say, the Island of Columba of the Churches). From that little island the light of the Gospel afterwards spread, not only over Scotland, but far towards the south of England, and many monasteries, both in Scotland and in Ireland, were under the rule of its abbot.
For hundreds of years the schools of Ireland continued to be in great repute. Young men flocked to them from England, and even from foreign lands, and many Irish missionaries laboured in various countries abroad. The chief of those who fall within the time to which this little book reaches, was Columban (a different person from Columba, although their names are so like). He left Ireland with twelve companions, in the year 589, preached in the east of France for many years, and afterwards in Switzerland and in Italy, and died in 615, at the monastery of Bobbio, which he had founded among the Apennine mountains. One of his disciples, Gall, is styled "The Apostle of Switzerland," and founded a great monastery, which from him is called St. Gall.
NOTES
[ [47]See King's "History of the Church in Ireland," i. 19-21.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CLOVIS.
A.D. 496.
The most famous and the most important of all the conversions which took place about this time was that of Clovis, king of the Franks. From being the chief of a small, though brave people, on the borders of France and Belgium, he grew by degrees to be the founder of the great French monarchy. His queen, Clotilda, was a Christian, and long tried in vain to bring him over to her faith. "The gods whom you worship," she said, "are nothing, and can profit neither themselves nor others; for they are graven out of stone, or wood, or metal, and the names which you give them were not the names of gods but of men. But He ought rather to be worshipped who by His word made out of nothing the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that in them is." Clovis does not seem to have cared very much about the truth, one way or the other; but he had the fancy (which was common among the heathens, and which is often mentioned in the Old Testament), that if people did not prosper in this world, the god whom they served could not have the power to protect them and give them success. And, as he lived in the time when the Roman empire of the west came to an end, the fall of the empire, which had now been Christian for more than a hundred and fifty years, seemed to him to prove that the Christian religion could not be true.
Clotilda persuaded her husband to let their eldest son be baptized. But the child died within a few days after, and Clovis said that his baptism was the cause of his death. When another prince was born, however, he allowed him too to be baptized. Clotilda continued to press her husband with all the reason that she could think of in order to bring him over to the Gospel. Some of her reasons were true and good; some of them were drawn from the superstitious opinions of these times, such as stories about miracles wrought at the tomb of St. Martin at Tours. Perhaps the bad reasons were more likely than the good ones to have an effect on a rough barbarian prince such as Clovis; but Clotilda could make nothing of him in any way.
At length, in the year 496, he was engaged in battle with a German tribe, at a place called Tolbiac, near Cologne, and found himself in great danger of being defeated. He called on his own gods, but without success, and at last he bethought himself of the God to whose worship Clotilda had so long been trying to convert him. So, in his anxiety, he stretched out his arms towards the sky, and called on the name of Christ, promising that, if the God of Clotilda would help him in his strait, he would become a Christian. A victory followed, which Clovis ascribed to the effect of his prayer. He then put himself under the instruction of St. Remigius, bishop of Rheims, that he might get a knowledge of Christian doctrine, and at the following Christmas he was baptized in Rheims cathedral, where the kings of France were afterwards crowned for centuries, down to the unfortunate Charles X., in 1824. Remigius caused it to be decked for the occasion with beautiful carpets and hangings. A vast number of tapers shed their bright light over the building, while all without was covered by the darkness of a December evening; and we are told that the sweet perfume of incense seemed to those who were there like the air of paradise. As Clovis entered the church, and heard the solemn chant of psalms, he was overcome with awe. Turning to Remigius, who led him by the hand, he asked, "Is this the kingdom of heaven which you have promised me?" "No," answered the bishop; "but it is the beginning of the way to it." When they had reached the font, Remigius addressed the king by a name on which the noblest among the Franks prided themselves,—"Sicambrian, gently bow thy neck; worship that which thou hast burnt, and burn that which thou hast worshipped." Three thousand of the Frankish warriors were forthwith baptized, in imitation of their leader.
Remigius had much influence over Clovis as to religious things, and instructed him as he found opportunity. One day, as he was reading to the king the story of our Lord's sufferings, Clovis was so much moved by it that he started up in anger and cried out—"If I had been there with my Franks, I would have avenged His wrongs!"
From what has been said, it will be understood that the religion of Clovis was not of an enlightened kind; and there was much in his character and actions which did not become his Christian profession. Yet his conversion, such as it was, appears to have been sincere. As his conquests spread, he put down Arianism wherever he found it, and planted the Catholic faith instead of it. And from the circumstance that Clovis was converted to Catholic Christianity at a time when all the other princes of the west were Arians, and when the emperor of the east favoured the heresy of Eutyches,[48] the kings of France got the title of "Eldest Son of the Church."
NOTES
CHAPTER XXVII.
JUSTINIAN.
A.D. 527-565.
It would be wearisome to follow very particularly the history of the Church in the East for the next century and a half after the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451).
The most important reign during this time was that of the Emperor Justinian, which lasted eight-and-thirty years, from 527 to 565. Under him the Vandals were conquered in Africa, and the Goths in Italy. Both these countries became once more parts of the empire, and Arianism was put down in both.
Justinian also, in the year 529, put an end to the old heathen philosophy, by ordering that the schools of Athens, in which St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, and the emperor Julian had studied together two hundred years before,[49] should be shut up. The philosophers, who had continued to teach their heathen notions there (although they had been obliged to treat the religion of the empire with outward respect), were in great distress at finding their trade taken away from them. They thought it unsafe to remain in Justinian's dominions, and made their way into Persia, where the king was a heathen, and was said to be a friend of learned men. The king received them kindly; but the Persian heathenism was very different from their own, and the ways of the country were altogether strange to them; so that they felt themselves very uncomfortable in Persia, and became so home-sick as to be willing to risk even their lives for the sake of getting back to their own country. Happily for them, the Persian king was able to intercede for them in making a peace with Justinian; and it was agreed that they might live within the empire as they liked, without being troubled by the laws, if they would only remain quiet, and not try to draw Christian youths away from the faith. The philosophers were too glad to return on such terms. I wish I could tell that they became Christians themselves: but all that is said of them is, that when they died, there were no more of the kind, and that heathen philosophy no longer stood in the way of the Gospel.
Justinian spent vast sums of money on buildings, especially on churches; but it is said that much of what he spent in this way had been got by oppressive taxes and by other bad means, so that we cannot think much the better of him for it. The grandest of all his buildings was the cathedral of Constantinople. The church had been founded by Constantine the Great, but was once burnt down after the banishment of St. Chrysostom, and a second time in this reign. Justinian rebuilt it at a vast expense, and, as he cast his eyes around it on the day of the consecration, after expressing his thankfulness to God for having been allowed to accomplish so great a work, he gave vent to the pride of his heart in the words: "I have beaten thee, O Solomon!" The cathedral was afterwards partly destroyed by an earthquake, but Justinian again restored it, and caused it to be once more consecrated, about two years before his death. We learn from one of his laws that this church had sixty priests, a hundred deacons, forty deaconesses, ninety subdeacons, a hundred and ten readers, five-and-twenty singers, and a hundred doorkeepers. And (which we should perhaps not have expected to hear) the law was made for the purpose of preventing the number of clergy connected with the cathedral from increasing beyond this, lest it should not have wealth enough to maintain a greater number! This great building is still standing (although it is now in the hands of the Mahometan Turks); and it is regarded as one of the wonders of the world. It was dedicated to the Eternal Wisdom, and is now commonly known by the name of St. Sophia (sophia being the Greek word for wisdom).
NOTES
CHAPTER XXVIII.
NESTORIANS AND MONOPHYSITES.
From the time of the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), to the end of Justinian's reign, the Eastern Church was vexed by controversies which arose out of the opinions of Eutyches.[50] On account of these quarrels, the Churches of Rome and Constantinople would have no intercourse with each other for five-and-thirty years (A.D. 484-519). The party which had at first been called Eutychians (after Eutyches) afterwards got the name of Monophysites, (that is to say, Maintainers of one nature only,)—because they said that after our blessed Lord had taken on Him the nature of man, His Godhead and His manhood made up but one nature; whereas the Catholics held that His two natures remain perfect and distinct in Him. The party split up into a number of divisions, the very names of which it is difficult to remember. And other quarrels arose out of the great controversy with the Eutychians. The most noted of these was the dispute as to what were called the "Three Articles." It was not properly a question respecting the faith, but whether certain writings, then a hundred years old, were or were not favourable to Nestorianism. But it was thought so important, that a council, which is reckoned as the fifth general council, was held on account of it at Constantinople in the year 553.
Notwithstanding all their quarrels among themselves, the Monophysites grew very strong in various countries. In Egypt they were more in number than the Catholics. The Abyssinian Church (which, as we saw in a former chapter,[51] was considered as a daughter of the Egyptian Church) took up these opinions. The Nubians were converted from heathenism by Monophysite missionaries; and in Armenia the church exchanged the Catholic doctrine for the Monophysite in the sixth century.
But the most remarkable man of this sect was a Syrian named Jacob. He found his party suffering and greatly weakened, in consequence of the laws which the emperors had made against it; and most of the bishops and clergy had been removed by banishment, imprisonment, or other means. Being resolved to preserve the sect, if possible, from dying out, Jacob went to Constantinople, made his way into the prison where some of the Monophysite bishops were confined, and was secretly consecrated by them as a bishop, with authority to watch over all the congregations of their communion throughout Syria and the East. For nearly forty years (A.D. 541-578) he laboured in carrying out the work which he had undertaken, with a zeal and a stedfastness which we cannot but admire, although we must regret that they were employed in the cause of heresy. In order that he might not be known, as there were severe laws against spreading his opinions, he dressed himself as a beggar, and thence got the name of The Ragged. In this disguise, he travelled, without ceasing, over Syria and Mesopotamia. His secret was faithfully kept by the members of his party. He stirred up their spirit, ordained bishops and clergy to minister among them in private, and at his death, in 578, he left the sect large and flourishing. From this Jacob, the Monophysites of other countries, as well as of his own, got the name of Jacobites;[52] in return for which they called the Catholics Melchites—that is to say, followers of the emperor's religion. And by these names of Melchites and Jacobites, the remnants of the old Christian parties in the East are known to this day.
The Nestorians also continued to be a strong body. Both they and the Monophysites were very active in missions—more active, indeed, than the eastern Catholics. The Nestorians, in particular, made great numbers of converts in Persia (where the heathen kings would allow no other kind of Christianity than Nestorianism), in India, and in other parts of Asia. And in the seventh century (which is somewhat beyond the bounds of this little book) their missionaries made their way even to China, where they preached with great success.
NOTES
[ [52]These Jacobites of the East must not be confounded with the Jacobites of English history, who were the friends of James II., and of his family, after the Revolution of 1688.
CHAPTER XXIX.
ST. BENEDICT.
PART I. A.D. 480-529.
Let us now look again at the monks. Their way of life was at first devised as a means of either practising repentance for sin, or rising to such a height of holiness as was supposed to be beyond the reach of persons busied in the affairs of this world. But in course of time a change took place. As the life of monks grew more common, it grew less strict; indeed, it would seem that whenever any way of life which professes to be very strict becomes common, its strictness will pretty surely be lessened, or given up altogether. People at first turned monks because they felt that such means of holy living as they had been used to did not make them so good as they ought to be, and because they hoped to do better in this new kind of life. But when the monkish life was no longer new, monks neglected its rules, just as those before them had neglected the rules which holy Scripture and the Church had laid down for all Christians.
In the unhappy days which had now come on, the monasteries of the west had in great measure escaped the evils of war and conquest which laid waste everything around them. The barbarians, who overwhelmed the empire, generally respected them; and now the life of monks, instead of being chosen for its hardships, as it had been at first, came to be regarded as the easiest and the safest life of all. It was sought after as one which would free people from the dangers to which they would be liable if they remained in the world, and took the common share in the world's risks and troubles.
Another important matter was this—that monkery had taken its rise in Egypt and in Syria, where the climate and the habits of the people were very different from those of the western countries. And a great part of the monkish rules were fitted only for the particular circumstances and character of the eastern nations;—for instance, they could do with less food than the people of the west, so that a writer of the fifth century said, "A large appetite is gluttony in the Greeks, but in the Gauls it is nature." Again, the Egyptians and the Syrians, in their hot climate, did not need active employment in the same way as the western nations do, in order to keep their minds and their bodies healthful. They could spend their hours and their days in calmly thinking of spiritual things, or of nothing at all, in a way which the more active mind of Europeans cannot bear. And again, many rules as to dress, which are suitable for one sort of climate, are quite unfit for a different sort.
Now the earlier rules for monks had been drawn up either in the east or after eastern patterns. And although, when they were brought into the west, people for a time obeyed them as well as they could, it was found that they would not obey them any longer when the first heat of zeal for monkery had passed away. Hence it followed, that, throughout the monasteries of the west, there was a general neglect of the rules by which they professed to be governed; and it was high time that there should be some reformation.
A reformer arose in the sixth century. This was Benedict, who was born near Nursia, in Italy, in the year 480. At the age of twelve he was sent to school at Rome, under the care of a nurse, as seems to have been usual in those days. He worked hard at his studies, but the bad behaviour of the other boys and young men at Rome so shocked him, that, when he had been there two years, he resolved to bear it no longer. He therefore suddenly ran away from the city, and, after his nurse had gone a considerable distance with him, he left her, and made his way into a rough and lonely country near Subiaco, where he took up his abode in a cave. Here he was found out by a monk of a neighbouring house, named Romanus, who used daily to save part of his own allowance of food, and to carry it to his young friend. The cave opened from the face of a lofty rock, and the way that Romanus took of conveying the food to Benedict was by letting it down at the end of a string from the top of the rock.
Benedict had lived in this manner for three years when he was discovered by some shepherds, who at first took him for some wild animal; but they soon found that he was something very different. He taught them and others to whom they made his abode known, and his character came to be so much respected in the neighbourhood that he was chosen abbot of a monastery. He warned the monks that they would probably not like him, but they were resolved to have him nevertheless. Their habits, however, were so bad, that Benedict felt himself obliged to check them rather sharply; and the monks then attempted to get rid of him by mixing poison in his drink. But he found out their wicked design, and the only reproof which he gave them was by reminding them how he had warned them not to make him their abbot. With this he left them to themselves, and went quietly back to his cave.
His name now grew more and more famous. Great multitudes of people flocked to see him, and even persons of high rank sent their sons to be trained under him. He built twelve monasteries, each for an abbot and twelve monks. But there was a spiteful monk, named Florentius, who would not allow him any peace so long as they were near each other; so Benedict thought it best to give way, and in 528 he left Subiaco, with some companions, and, after some wanderings, arrived at Mount Cassino. There he found that the country people still worshipped some of the old heathen gods, and that there was a grove which was held sacred to these gods. But he set boldly to work, and, notwithstanding all that could be done to oppose him, he cut down the grove, destroyed the idols, and built a little chapel, from which in time grew up a great and famous monastery, which still exists. And at Mount Cassino he drew up his Rule in the year 529; so that the beginning of the monks of St. Benedict was in the very same year in which heathen philosophy came to its end by the closing of the schools of Athens.[53]
Benedict had seen the mischief which arose from too great strictness of rules. He saw how it led to open disobedience and carelessness in some, and to hypocritical pretence in others; and therefore he meant to guard against these faults by making his rule milder than those of the East. It was to be such that Europeans might keep it without danger to their health, and he allowed it to be varied according to the circumstances of the different countries in which it might be established.
Every Benedictine monastery was to be under an abbot, who was to be chosen by the monks. The brethren were to obey the abbot in everything, while the abbot was charged not to be haughty or tyrannical in using his authority. Next to the abbot there might either be a provost, or (which Benedict liked better) there might be a number of elders or deans, who were to help and advise the abbot in the government of his monastery. Any one who wished to join the order was to undergo trial for a year before admission. Those who were admitted into it were required to give in a written vow that they would continue in it, that they would amend their lives, and that they would obey those who were set over them. Every monk was obliged to give up all his property to the order; nobody was allowed to have anything of his own, but all things were common to the brethren. The monks might not receive any presents or letters, even from their nearest relations, without the abbot's knowledge and leave, and if a present were sent for one of them, the abbot had the power to keep it from him, and to give it to any other monk.
It was one important part of the rule that the monks should have sufficient employment provided, for them. They were to get up at two o'clock in the morning; they were to attend eight services a day, or, if they happened to be at a distance from their monastery, they were to observe the hours of the services by prayer; and they were to work seven hours. Portions of time were allowed for learning psalms by heart, and for reading the Scriptures, lives of holy men, and other edifying books. At meals the monks were not to talk, but some book was to be read aloud to them. Their food was to be plain and simple; no flesh was allowed, except to the sick. But all such matters were to be settled by the abbot, according to the climate and the season, to the age, the health, and the employment of the monks. Their dress was to be coarse, but was to be varied according to circumstances. They were to sleep by ten or twenty in a room, each in a separate bed, and without taking off their clothes. A dean was to have the care of each room, and a light was to be kept burning in each. No talking was to be allowed after the last service of the day.
The monks were never to go beyond the monastery without leave, and, in order that there might be little occasion for their going out, it was to contain within its walls the garden, the well, the mill, the bakehouse, and other such necessary things. The abbot was to set every monk his work; if it were found that any one was inclined to pride himself on his skill in any art or trade, he was not to be allowed to practise it, but was obliged to take up some other employment.
Benedict died in 543, and by that time his order had made its way into France, Spain, and Sicily. It soon drew into itself all the monks of the west, and was divided into a number of branches, which all looked up to Benedict as their founder; and, although it would be a sad mistake to wish for any revival of monkery in our own days, we ought, in justice, to see and to acknowledge that through God's providence these monks became the means of great benefits to mankind. Not only were their services important for the maintenance of the Gospel where it was already planted, and for the spreading of it among the heathen, but they cleared forests, brought waste lands into tillage, and did much to civilize the rude nations among whom they laboured. After a time, learning began to be cultivated among them, and during the troubled ages which followed, it found a refuge in the monasteries. The monks taught the young; they copied the Scriptures and other ancient books (for printing was as yet unknown); they wrote histories of their times, and other books of their own. To them, indeed, it is that we are mainly indebted for preserving the knowledge of the past through many centuries.
NOTES
CHAPTER XXX.
END OF THE SIXTH CENTURY.
PART I.
We must not suppose that the conversion of the western barbarians was of any very perfect kind. They mixed up a great deal of their own barbarism with their Christianity, and, besides this, they took up many of the vices of the old and worn-out nations, whose countries they had conquered and occupied. Much heathen superstition lingered among them: it was even a common saying in Spain, that "if a man has to pass between heathen altars and God's Church, it is no harm if he pay his respects to both." The clergy were very wealthy and prosperous, but did not venture to interfere with the vices of the great and powerful; or, if they did, it was at their peril. For instance, when a bishop of Rouen had offended the Frankish queen Fredegund, she caused him to be murdered in his own cathedral, at the most solemn service of Easter-day.
Religion became a protection to crime; murderers were allowed to take refuge in churches, and might not be dragged out until after an oath had been made that their lives should be safe. It had been the ancient custom of the Germans to let all crimes be atoned for by the payment of money: if, for example, a person had killed another, he had no more to do than to pay a certain sum to the dead man's relations. And this way of making up for misdeeds was now brought into the Church; it was thought that men might make satisfaction for their sins by paying money, and that the effect would be the same if others paid for them after their death. We may understand how this worked, from another story of queen Fredegund, who seems to have been a perfect monster of wickedness. She set two of her pages to murder a king, named Sigebert; and, by way of encouraging them, she said that she would honour them highly, if they came off with their lives; but that, if they were slain, she would lay out a great deal of money in alms for the good of their souls!
As might naturally have been expected among such people, it came to be very commonly thought that the observance of outward worship and ceremonies was all that religion required. Pretended miracles were wrought in great numbers, for the purpose of imposing on the ignorant; and all, from the king downwards, were then ignorant enough to be deceived by them. The superstitions which had begun in the fourth century[54] continued to grow on the Church; such as the reverence paid to saints, and especially to the Blessed Virgin, so that people allowed them a part of the honour which ought to have been kept for God alone. Among other such corruptions were the reverence for the relics of saints (that is, for parts of their bodies, or for things which had belonged to them), and the religious honour paid to images and pictures. These and other evils increased more and more, until, at length, they could be borne no longer, and, in many countries, they caused the great religious change which is called the Reformation.
But nearly a thousand years had to pass before the time of the Reformation; and, in the meanwhile, although much was amiss in the Christianity which prevailed, it yet was the means of blessing and of salvation. And there were never wanting good men who, although there were many defects and errors in their opinions, firmly held and clearly taught the necessity of a real living faith in Christ, and of a thoroughly earnest endeavour to obey God's holy will.
The state of Italy towards the end of the sixth century was very wretched. Vast numbers of its people had perished in the course of the wars by which Justinian's generals had wrested the country from the Goths, and had again united it to the empire;[55] multitudes of others had been destroyed by famine and pestilence. The Lombards, who had crossed the Alps in the year 568, had obliged the emperors to yield the north, and part of the middle of Italy, to them; and they continually threatened the portions which still remained to the empire. No help against them was to be got from Constantinople; and the governors whom the emperors sent to manage their Italian dominions, instead of directing and leading the people to resist the Lombards, only hindered them from taking their defence into their own hands.
The land was left uncultivated, partly through the loss of inhabitants, and partly because those who remained were disheartened by the miseries of the time. They had not the spirit to bestow their labour on it, when there was almost a certainty that their crops would be destroyed or carried off by the Lombard invaders; and the soil, when left to itself, had in many places become so unwholesome, that it was not fit to live on. Italy had in former times been so thickly peopled, that it had been necessary to get supplies of corn from Sicily and from Africa. But now such foreign supplies were wanted for a very different reason—that the inhabitants of Italy could not, or did not, grow corn for themselves. The city of Rome had suffered from storms, and from repeated floods of the river Tiber, which did a great deal of damage to its buildings, and sometimes washed away or spoiled the stores of corn which were laid up in the granaries. The people were kept in terror by the Lombards, who often advanced to their very walls, so that it was unsafe to venture beyond the gates.
The condition of the Church too was very deplorable. The troubles of the times had produced a general decay of morals and order both among the clergy and among the people. The Lombards were Arians, and religious enmity was added to the other causes of dislike between them and the Romans. In Istria, there was a division which had begun after the fifth general council,[56] and which kept the Church of that country separate from the communion of Rome for a hundred and fifty years. The sunken condition of Christianity in Gaul (or France) has been described in the beginning of this chapter. Spain was just recovered from Arianism,[57] but there was much to be done before the Catholic faith could be considered as firmly established there. In Africa, the old sect of the Donatists began again to lift up its head, and took courage from the confusions of the time to vex the Church. The Churches of the east were torn by quarrels as to Eutychianism and Nestorianism. And the patriarchs of Constantinople seemed likely, with the help of the emperor's favour, to be dangerous rivals to the popes of Rome.
Such was the state of things when Gregory the Great became pope or bishop of Rome, in the year 590.
NOTES
CHAPTER XXXI.
ST. GREGORY THE GREAT.
A.D. 540-604.
PART I.
Gregory was born at Rome, of a noble and wealthy family, in the year 540. In his youth he engaged in public business, and he rose to be prætor of Rome, which was one of the chief offices under the government. In this office he was much beloved and respected by the people. But about the age of thirty-five, a great change took place in his life. He resolved to forsake the pursuit of worldly honours, and spent all his wealth in founding seven monasteries. He gave up his family house at Rome to begin a monastery, in which he became at first a simple monk, and was afterwards chosen abbot. A pope, named Pelagius, showed him great favour, by making him his secretary, and employing him for some years as a sort of ambassador at the emperor's court at Constantinople. And when Pelagius was carried off by a plague, in the year 589, the nobles, the clergy, and the people of Rome all agreed in choosing Gregory to succeed him.
Gregory was afraid to undertake the office. It was necessary that the emperor should consent to his appointment; and he wrote to beg that the emperor would refuse his consent. But the governor of Rome stopped the letter, and all the other attempts which Gregory made to escape the honour intended for him were baffled; so that in the end he was obliged to submit, and was consecrated as bishop of Rome in September, 590.
Gregory felt all the difficulties of his new place. He compares his Church to an old ship, shattered by winds and waves, decayed in its timbers, full of leaks, and in continual danger of going to wreck. The vast quantity and variety of business which he went through appears to us from the collection of his letters, of which about eight hundred and fifty still remain. We see from these how he strove to strengthen his Church in all quarters, and what steps he took for the government of it. Some of the letters are addressed to emperors and kings, and treat about the greatest affairs of Church or State. And then all at once we find him passing from such high matters to direct that some poor tenant on one of his estates should be excused from paying a part of his rent, or that relief should be given to some widow or orphan who had written from a distance to ask his help.
The bishops of Rome had by degrees become very rich. They had estates, not only in Italy and Sicily, but in Africa, in France, and even in Asia. And the people who managed these estates were employed by Gregory to carry on his other business in the same countries, and to report the state of the Church to him from all quarters. Very little of his large income was spent on himself. We may have some notion of the plain way in which the great bishop lived from one of his letters to the steward of his estates in Sicily. "You have sent me," says Gregory, "one wretched horse, and five good asses. I cannot ride the horse because he is wretched; nor the good beasts, because they are but asses." He lived chiefly in the company of monks and clergy, employing himself in study with them. And, in the midst of all the business which took up his time, he wrote a number of books, of which some are very valuable. He was also famous as a preacher. Among his sermons are a set of twenty-two on the prophet Ezekiel, which he had meant to carry further. But he was obliged to break off by the attacks of the Lombards, as he told his people in the end of the last sermon—"Let no one blame me," he says, "if after this discourse I stop, since, as you all see, our troubles are multiplied on us. On every side we are surrounded with swords; on every side we dread the danger of death which is close at hand. Some come back to us with their hands cut off; we hear of some as being taken prisoners, and of others as slain. I am forced to with-hold my tongue from expounding, since my soul is weary of my life (Job x. 1). How can I, who am forced daily to drink bitter things, draw forth sweet things to you? What remains for us, but that in the chastisement which we are suffering because of our misdeeds, we should give thanks with weeping to Him who made us, and who hath bestowed on us the spirit of adoption (Rom. viii. 15)—to Him who sometimes nourisheth His children with bread, and sometimes correcteth them with a scourge—who, by benefits and by sufferings alike, is training us for an eternal inheritance?"
Gregory laboured zealously in improving the education of the clergy, and in reforming such disorders as he found in his Church. He founded a school for singing, and established a new way of chanting, which from him has the name of the Gregorian Chant, and is used to this day. We are told that the whip with which he used to correct his choristers was kept at Rome as a relic for hundreds of years.
His charities were very great. On the first day of every month he gave out large quantities of provisions to the people of Rome. The old nobility had suffered so much by the wars, and by the loss of their estates in countries which had been torn from them by the barbarians, that many of them were glad to come in for a share of the good pope's bounty. Every day he sent relief to a number of poor persons in all parts of the city; and he used to send dishes from his own table to those whom he knew to be in distress, but ashamed to ask for assistance. Once when a poor man was found dead in the streets, Gregory denied himself the holy communion for some days, because it seemed to him that he must be in some measure to blame. He used to receive strangers and wanderers at his own table, out of regard for our Lord's words—"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (St. Matt. xxv. 40).
Having thus seen something of Gregory's life at home, we must now look at his proceedings in other quarters.
He had a sharp dispute with a bishop of Constantinople, on account of the title of Universal Bishop, which the patriarchs of the eastern capital had for some time taken to themselves. When we hear such a title, we may naturally fancy that it signified a claim to authority over the whole Church on earth. But, as it was then used, it really had no such meaning. The Greeks were fond of lofty and sounding titles, which seemed to mean much more than they were really understood to mean. This fondness appears in the titles of the emperors and of the officers of their empire, and it was by it that the patriarchs were led to style themselves "Universal Bishop." If the title had been intended as a claim to authority over all Churches, it could only have been given to one person at a time; but we find that the emperor Justinian gave it to the bishops both of Constantinople and of Rome, and that he styled each of them "Head of all the Churches;" and, whatever the patriarchs of Constantinople may have meant by it, they certainly did not make any claim to authority over Rome or the western Church.
But there was an old jealousy between the sees of Rome and Constantinople, ever since the time when the second general council in 381 gave the bishop of Constantinople the second place of honour in the whole Church.[58] This jealousy had grown greater in late times, when there was no very kindly feeling between the emperors and their Italian subjects, and when it seemed not impossible that the bishop of the new capital, backed by the emperor, might even try to dispute the first place with the bishop of Rome. And Gregory, who did not understand the Greek language, or how little the Greeks meant by their fine titles, was ready to take offence at the name of "Universal Bishop." So, when a bishop of Constantinople, John the Faster, styled himself so on an important occasion, Gregory objected strongly;—he wrote to John, to the emperor, and to the bishops of Alexandria and of Antioch, declaring that the title was proud and foolish, that it came from the devil, and was a token of Antichrist's approach, and that it was unfit for any Christian bishop to use. The emperor, however, would not help him against the patriarch. John would not yield, and the other eastern patriarchs (partly from a wish to be at peace, and partly because the words did not seem offensive to them, as they did to Gregory), were little disposed to take up his quarrel. After a time, another emperor, who had special reasons for wishing to stand well with Gregory, forbade the successor of John to call himself "Universal;" but the title was soon restored by the emperors to the bishops of Constantinople, although not until after the death of Gregory. The most curious part of the story, however, is this—that Gregory's successors in the popedom have taken up the very title which he condemned so strongly; and that, instead of using it in the harmless meaning which it had in the east, they have intended it as a claim to power over the whole Church,—that claim of which the very notion filled Gregory with such horror and indignation, and which he declared to be unfit for any bishop whatever to make.
Gregory did much to bring over the Lombards from their Arianism, and he succeeded in part, although the work was not completed until after his time. He also laboured earnestly to revive the Church in France and in other countries. But instead of dwelling on these things, I shall content myself with telling of the chief work which he did in spreading the Gospel; and it is one which very much concerns ourselves.
In those days slavery was common throughout all the known world, and, although the Gospel had wrought a great improvement in the treatment of slaves, by making the masters feel that they and their slaves were brethren in Christ, it yet had not forbidden slavery. But there was a feeling of pity for those who fell into this sad condition by the chances of war or otherwise. It was a common act of charity for good Christians to redeem captives and to set them at liberty. This, indeed, was thought so holy a work, and so agreeable to the words of Scripture—"I will have mercy, and not sacrifice" (Hos. vi. 6; St. Matt. ix. 13), that bishops often broke up and sold even the consecrated plate of their churches in order that they might get the means of ransoming captives whom they heard of. And, although slavery was still allowed by the laws of Christian kingdoms, those laws took care that Christian slaves should not be under Jews, or masters of any other than their own religion.
Gregory, then, while he was yet a monk, went one day into the market at Rome, just after the arrival of some merchants with a large cargo of slaves for sale. Some of these poor creatures, perhaps, had been taken in war; others had probably been sold by their own parents for the sake of the price which they fetched; for we are told that this shocking practice was not uncommon among some of the ruder nations. As Gregory looked at them, his eyes fell on some boys with whose appearance he was greatly struck. Their skin was fair, unlike the dark complexions of the Italians and other southern nations whom he had been used to see. Their features were beautiful, and they had long light flowing hair. He asked the merchants from what land these boys had been brought. "From Britain," they said; and they told him that the bright complexion which he admired so much was common among the people of that island. Perhaps Gregory had never thought of Britain before. It was nearly two hundred years since the Roman troops had been withdrawn from it, and its inhabitants had been left to themselves. And since that time the pagan Saxons had overrun it; the Romans had lost the countries which lay between them and it; and Britain had quite disappeared from their knowledge. Gregory, therefore, was obliged to ask whether the people were Christians or heathens, and he was told that they were still heathens. The good monk sighed deeply. "Alas, and woe!" said he, "that people with such faces of light should belong to the author of darkness, and that so goodly an outward favour should be void of inward grace." He asked what was the name of their nation, and was told that they were Angles. "It is well," he said, "for they have angels' faces, and such as they ought to be joint-heirs with the angels in heaven.—What is the name of the province from which they come?" He was told that it was Deira (a Saxon kingdom, which stretched along the eastern side of Britain, from the Humber to the Tyne). The name of Deira sounded to Gregory's ears like two Latin words, which mean "from wrath." "Well, again," he said, "they are delivered from the wrath of God, and are called to the mercy of Christ.—What is the name of the king of that country?" "Aella," was the answer. "Alleluiah!" (Praise to God!) exclaimed Gregory; "the praises of God their maker ought to be sung in that kingdom."
He went at once to the pope, and asked leave to go as a missionary to the heathens of Britain. But, although the pope consented, the people of Rome were so much attached to Gregory that they would not allow him to set out, and he was obliged to give up the plan. Yet he did not forget the heathens of Britain; and when he became pope, although he could not himself go to them, he was able to send others for the work of their conversion.
An opening had been made by the marriage of Ethelbert, king of Kent, the Saxon kingdom which lay nearest to the continent, with Bertha, daughter of Charibert, a Frankish king, whose capital was Paris (A.D. 570). As Charibert and his family were Christians, it had been agreed that the young queen should be allowed freely to practise her religion, and a French bishop, named Luidhard, came to England with her, and acted as her chaplain. Ethelbert by degrees became much more powerful than he was at the time of his marriage, and in 593 he was chosen Bretwalda, which was the title given to the chief of the Saxon kings. This office gave him much influence over most of the other kingdoms; so that, if his favour could be gained, it was likely to be of very great advantage for recommending the Gospel to others. But Ethelbert was still a heathen, after having been married to Bertha about five-and-twenty years, although we may well suppose that she had sometimes spoken to him of her religion, and had tried to bring him over to it. And perhaps Bertha may have had a share in sending Gregory the reports which he mentions, that the Saxons in England were ready to receive the Gospel, and in begging him to take pity on them.
In the year 596 Gregory sent off a party of monks as missionaries to the English Saxons. The head of them was Augustine, who had been provost (that is, the highest person after the abbot)[59] of the monastery to which the pope himself had formerly belonged. And, at the same time, Gregory directed the manager of his estates in France to buy up a number of captive Saxon youths, and to place them in monasteries, that they might learn the Christian faith, and might afterwards become missionaries to their own countrymen.
When Augustine and his brethren had got as for as the south of France, they heard many terrible stories of the English, so they took fright at the thought of going among such savages, whose very language was unknown to them; and Augustine went back to Rome to beg that they might be allowed to give up their undertaking. But Gregory would not consent to this. He encouraged them to go on, and he gave Augustine letters to some French kings and bishops, desiring them to assist the missionaries, and to supply them with interpreters who understood the language of the Saxons. Augustine, therefore, returned to the place where he had left his companions. They made their way across France, and in 597 he landed, with about forty monks, in the Isle of Thanet.
Ethelbert lived at Canterbury, the capital of the Kentish kingdom, at no great distance from the place where the missionaries had landed. On receiving notice of their arrival, he sent to desire that they would remain where they were until he should visit them; and within a few days he went to them. The meeting was held in the open air; for Ethelbert had a superstitious fear that they might do him some mischief by magical arts, if he were to trust himself under a roof with them. The missionaries advanced in procession, with a silver cross borne before them, and displaying a picture of the crucified Saviour; and, as they slowly moved onwards, they chanted a prayer for their own salvation and that of the people to whom they had been sent. Ethelbert received them courteously, and desired them to sit down; and then Augustine made a speech, telling the king that they were come to preach the word of life to him and to his subjects. "These are indeed fair words and promises which you bring with you," said Ethelbert; "but, because they are new and uncertain, I cannot at once take up with them, and leave the faith which I and all my people have so long observed. But as you have come from far, and as I think you wish to give us a share in things which you believe to be true and most profitable, we will not show you unkindness, but rather will receive you hospitably, and not hinder you from converting as many as you can to your religion."
He then granted them a lodging in his capital, and ordered that they should be supplied with all that they might need. As they drew near to Canterbury, they again displayed the silver cross, and the banner on which the Saviour was painted; and they entered the city in procession, chanting a litany which Gregory had made for the people of Rome, during the great plague which carried off pope Pelagius.
A little way outside the city they found a small church, which had been built in the days of the old British Christianity, and in which Luidhard had since held his service for Queen Bertha and the Christians of her court. It was called by the name of St. Martin; for even before the Saxon invasion his name had become so famous that many churches were called after it; and we may well believe that Queen Bertha, on arriving from France, was glad to find that the church in which she was to worship had long ago been named in honour of the great saint of her own land. There Augustine and his brethren now held their service; and the sight of their holy, gentle, and self-denying lives soon drew many to receive their instructions. Ethelbert himself was baptized on Whitsunday, 597, and, although he would not force his people to profess the Gospel, he declared himself desirous of their conversion.
Gregory had desired Augustine, if he met with success in the beginning of his mission, to return from Britain into France and be consecrated as a bishop. He now obeyed this direction, and was consecrated at Arles; and without any delay he again crossed the sea, and renewed his labours among the Saxons. Such was his progress in the work of conversion, that at Christmas of the year in which he first landed in Britain ten thousand persons were baptized in one day. Four years later, Gregory made him an archbishop; and he sent him a fresh body of clergy to help him, with a large supply of books, vestments, and other things for the service of the Church. He also gave him instructions how to proceed, so as to advance the true faith without giving needless offence to the prejudices of the heathen.
Augustine's chief difficulties, indeed, were not with the Saxons, but with the clergy of the ancient British Church, whom he could not succeed in bringing to an agreement. We must not lay the blame wholly on either side; if the Britons were somewhat jealous and obstinate, Augustine seems to have taken too much upon himself in his way of dealing with them. But, whatever his faults may have been, we are bound to hold his memory in honour for the zealous and successful labours by which the Gospel was a second time introduced into the southern part of this island. Before his death, in 604, he had established a second bishop for Kent, in the city of Rochester, and one at London, which was then the capital of the kingdom of Essex. And by degrees, partly by the followers of St. Augustine, and partly by the Scotch monks of Icolumbkill,[60] all the Saxon kingdoms of England were converted to the Christian faith.
In the same year with Augustine, Gregory also died, after long and severe illness, which obliged him for years to keep his bed, but could not check his activity in watching over the interests of religion.
Gregory had intended that Augustine should be archbishop of London, because in the old Roman days London had been the chief city of Britain; and it might seem natural that the chief bishop of our Church should now take his title from the capital of all England. But when Gregory sent forth his missionaries he did not know that England had been divided by the Saxons into several kingdoms. In consequence of this division of the country, Augustine, instead of becoming archbishop of London, fixed himself in the capital of Kent, the first kingdom which he converted, and then the most powerful of all. Hence it is that his successors, the primates of all England, to this day, are not archbishops of London but of Canterbury.
And, although Canterbury be not now a very large town, it is a very interesting place, and is full of memorials of its first archbishop. The noble cathedral, called Christ Church, stands in the same place with an ancient Roman-British church which Augustine recovered from heathen uses and consecrated in honour of the Saviour. Close to it are the remains of the archbishop's palace, built on the same ground with the palace of Ethelbert, which he gave up to the missionaries. A little church of St. Martin still stands on a rising ground outside the city, on the spot where Bertha and Luidhard had worshipped before the arrival of Augustine, and where he and his brethren celebrated their earliest services. And, although it has been rebuilt since then, we may still see in its walls a number of bricks which by their appearance are known to be Roman,—the very same materials of which the little church was built at first, while the Romans were yet in Britain, fourteen centuries and a half ago; nay, it is even supposed that some part of the masonry is Roman too. Between St. Martin's and the cathedral lay the great monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul, which Augustine began to build. He died before it was finished; but, as soon as it was ready, his body was removed to it, and in it Queen Bertha and her husband were afterwards buried. After a time the name of the monastery was changed to St. Augustine's, and for hundreds of years it was the chief monastery of all England. The Reformation in the sixteenth century put an end to monasteries; and the buildings of St. Augustine's went through many changes, until in the year 1844 the place was turned to a purpose similar to that which Augustine and Gregory had at heart when they undertook the conversion of England; for it is now a college for training missionaries. And, as Gregory wished that Saxon boys should be brought up with a view to converting their countrymen, so there are now at St. Augustine's College young men from distant heathen nations, receiving an education which may fit them hereafter to become missionaries of the Church of England to their brethren.[61] Nor is the good Gregory forgotten in the city which owes so much to him; for within the last few years a beautiful little church called by his name has been built, close to the college of St. Augustine.
Here this little book must close. It ends with the replanting of the Gospel in our own land. And, if hereafter the story should be carried further, some of its brightest pages will be filled by the labours of the missionaries who went forth from England to preach the faith of Christ in Germany and the adjoining countries.
NOTES
[ [61]Among those who were at the College when this volume was first printed was Kalli, the Esquimaux, of whom an account has since been written by the Rev. T. B. Murray, and published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He afterwards went to the diocese of Newfoundland, where he died of consumption.