As to the real teaching and aims of Christ (and as to many important aspects of his life) the views of conflicting theologians diverge more and more, as historical criticism (Strauss, Feuerbach, Baur, Renan, etc.) puts the accessible facts in their true light, and draws impartial conclusions from them. Two things, certainly, remain beyond dispute—the lofty principle of universal charity and the fundamental maxim of ethics, the “golden rule,” that issues therefrom; both, however, existed in theory and in practice centuries before the time of Christ (cf. [chap. xix].). For the rest, the Christians of the early centuries were generally pure Communists, sometimes “Social Democrats,” who, according to the prevailing theory in Germany to-day, ought to have been exterminated with fire and sword.

II.—PAPAL CHRISTIANITY

Latin Christianity, variously called Papistry, Romanism, Vaticanism, Ultramontanism, or the Roman Catholic Church, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of civilized man; in spite of the storms that have swept over it, it still exerts a most powerful influence. Of the four hundred and ten million Christians who are scattered over the earth the majority—that is, two hundred and twenty-five millions—are Roman Catholics; there are seventy-five million Greek Catholics and one hundred and ten million Protestants. During a period of one thousand two hundred years, from the fourth to the sixteenth century, the papacy has almost absolutely controlled and tainted the spiritual life of Europe; on the other hand, it has won but little territory from the ancient religions of Asia and Africa. In Asia Buddhism still counts five hundred and three million followers, the Brahmanic religion one hundred and thirty-eight millions, and Islam one hundred and twenty millions.

It is the despotism of the papacy that lent its darkest character to the Middle Ages; it meant death to all freedom of mental life, decay to all science, corruption to all morality. From the noble height to which the life of the human mind had attained in classical antiquity, in the centuries before Christ and the first century after Christ, it soon sank, under the rule of the papacy, to a level which, in respect of the knowledge of the truth, can only be termed barbarism. It is often protested that other aspects of mental life—poetry and architecture, scholastic learning and patristic philosophy—were richly developed in the Middle Ages. But this activity was in the service of the Church; it did not tend to the cultivation, but to the suppression, of free mental research. The exclusive preparing for an unknown eternity beyond the tomb, the contempt of nature, the withdrawal from the study of it, which are essential elements of Christianity, were urged as a sacred duty by the Roman hierarchy. It was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that a change for the better came in with the Reformation.

It is impossible for us here to describe the pitiful retrogression of culture and morality during the twelve centuries of the spiritual despotism of Rome. It is very pithily expressed in a saying of the greatest and the ablest of the Hohenzollerns; Frederick the Great condensed his judgment in the phrase that the study of history led one to think that from Constantine to the date of the Reformation the whole world was insane. L. Büchner has given us an admirable, brief description of this “period of insanity” in his work on Religious and Scientific Systems. The reader who desires a closer acquaintance with the subject would do well to consult the historical works of Ranke, Draper, Kolb, Svoboda, etc. The truthful description of the awful condition of the Christian Middle Ages, which is given by these and other unprejudiced historians, is confirmed by all the reliable sources of investigation, and by the historical monuments which have come down from the saddest period of human history. Educated Catholics, who are sincere truth-seekers, cannot be too frequently recommended to study these historical sources for themselves. This is the more necessary as ultramontane literature has still a considerable influence. The old trick of deceiving the faithful by a complete reversal of facts and an invention of miraculous circumstances is still worked by it with great success. We will only mention Lourdes and the “Holy Coat” of Trêves. The ultramontane professor of history at Frankfurt, Johannes Janssen, affords a striking example of the length they will go in distorting historical truth; his much-read works (especially his History of the German People since the Middle Ages) are marred by falsification to an incredible extent. The untruthfulness of these Jesuitical productions is on a level with the credulity and the uncritical judgment of the simple German nation that takes them for gospel.

One of the most interesting of the historical facts which clearly prove the evil of the ultramontane despotism is its vigorous and consistent struggle with science. This was determined on, in principle, from the very beginning of Christianity, inasmuch as it set faith above reason and preached the blind subjection of the one to the other; that was natural, seeing that our whole life on earth was held to be only a preparation for the legendary life beyond, and thus scientific research was robbed of any real value. The deliberate and successful attack on science began in the early part of the fourth century, particularly after the Council of Nicæa (327), presided over by Constantine—called the “Great” because he raised Christianity to the position of a state religion, and founded Constantinople, though a worthless character, a false-hearted hypocrite, and a murderer. The success of the papacy in its conflict with independent scientific thought and inquiry is best seen in the distressing condition of science and its literature during the Middle Ages. Not only were the rich literary treasures that classical antiquity had bequeathed to the world destroyed for the most part, or withdrawn from circulation, but the rack and the stake insured the silence of every heretic—that is, every independent thinker. If he did not keep his thoughts to himself, he had to look forward to being burned alive, as was the fate of the great monistic philosopher, Giordano Bruno, the reformer, John Huss, and more than a hundred thousand other “witnesses to the truth.” The history of science in the Middle Ages teaches us on every page that independent thought and empirical research were completely buried for twelve sad centuries under the oppression of the omnipotent papacy.

All that we esteem in true Christianity, in the sense of its founder and of his noblest followers, and that we must endeavor to save from the inevitable wreck of this great world religion for our new monistic religion, lies on its ethical and social planes. The principles of true humanism, the golden rule, the spirit of tolerance, the love of man, in the best and highest sense of the word—all these true graces of Christianity were not, indeed, first discovered and given to the world by that religion, but were successfully developed in the critical period when classical antiquity was hastening to its doom. The papacy, however, has attempted to convert all those virtues into the direct contrary, and still to hang out the sign of the old firm. Instead of Christian charity, it introduced a fanatical hatred of the followers of all other religions; with fire and sword it has pursued, not only the heathen, but every Christian sect that dared resist the imposition of ultramontane dogma. Tribunals for heretics were erected all over Europe, yielding unnumbered victims, whose torments seemed only to fill their persecutors, with all their Christian charity, with a peculiar satisfaction. The power of Rome was directed mercilessly for centuries against everything that stood in its way. Under the notorious Torquemada (1481-98), in Spain alone eight thousand heretics were burned alive and ninety thousand punished with the confiscation of their goods and the most grievous ecclesiastical fines; in the Netherlands, under the rule of Charles V., at least fifty thousand men fell victims to the clerical bloodthirst. And while the heavens resounded with the cry of the martyrs, the wealth of half the world was pouring into Rome, to which the whole of Christianity paid tribute, and the self-styled representatives of God on earth and their accomplices (not infrequently Atheists themselves) wallowed in pleasure and vice of every description. “And all these privileges,” said the frivolous, syphilitic Pope, Leo X., “have been secured to us by the fable of Jesus Christ.”

Yet, with all the discipline of the Church and the fear of God, the condition of European society was pitiable. Feudalism, serfdom, the grace of God, and the favor of the monks ruled the land; the poor helots were only too glad to be permitted to raise their miserable huts under the shadow of the castle or the cloister, their secular and spiritual oppressors and exploiters. Even to-day we suffer from the aftermath of these awful ages and conditions, in which there was no question of care for science or higher mental culture save in rare circumstances and in secret. Ignorance, poverty, and superstition combined with the immoral operation of the law of celibacy, which had been introduced in the eleventh century, to consolidate the ever-growing power of the papacy. It has been calculated that there were more than ten million victims of fanatical religious hatred during this “Golden Age” of papal domination; and how many more million human victims must be put to the account of celibacy, oral confession, and moral constraint, the most pernicious and accursed institutions of the papal despotism! Unbelieving philosophers, who have collected disproofs of the existence of God, have overlooked one of the strongest arguments in that sense—the fact that the Roman “Vicar of Christ” could for twelve centuries perpetrate with impunity the most shameful and horrible deeds “in the name of God.”

III.—THE REFORMATION

The history of civilization, which we are so fond of calling “the history of the world,” enters upon its third period with the Reformation of the Christian Church, just as its second period begins with the founding of Christianity. With the Reformation begins the new birth of fettered reason, the reawakening of science, which the iron hand of the Christian papacy had relentlessly crushed for twelve hundred years. At the same time the spread of general education had already commenced, owing to the invention of printing about the middle of the fifteenth century; and towards its close several great events occurred, especially the discovery of America in 1492, which prepared the way for the “renaissance” of science in company with that of art. Indeed, certain very important advances were made in the knowledge of nature during the first half of the sixteenth century, which shook the prevailing system to its very foundations. Such were the circumnavigation of the globe by Magellan in 1522, which afforded empirical proof of its rotundity, and the founding of the new system of the world by Copernicus in 1543.