I will not go further with the examination into the general consequences of the influence of the church upon European civilisation. I sum them up in this twofold result—a great and salutary influence upon the intellectual and moral development; an influence more disastrous than beneficial upon the political order of things, properly so called. We have now to test our assertions by facts, and to verify by history what we have deduced from the mere nature of the ecclesiastical society, and the situation occupied by it. Let us see what was the condition of the Christian church from the fifth to the twelfth century, and whether, in fact, the principles which I have laid down, and the results I have endeavoured to draw from them, were such in their development as I have ventured to surmise.
We are not to believe that these principles and consequences have all appeared at once, and as connectedly as I have presented them. It is a signal, and yet a very common error, when contemplating the past at the distance of many centuries, to forget with a singular obliviousness that history is essentially successive. Take the life of a man, of Cromwell, Gustavus Adolphus, or Cardinal Richelieu. He enters upon his career, and marches forward; great events influence him, he influences great events; finally he reaches the goal. Then we know him, but in his entirety, such as long experience and varied events have made him. [Footnote 10]
[Footnote 10: The original is not strictly followed in this phrase. M. Guizot gives vent to the following conceit:—'Tel qu'il est sorti en quelque sorte, après un long travail, de l'atelier de la Providence.']
Now, at starting he was not what he thus became, nor at any single period of his life was he complete and fully fashioned: his development was by a successive process. Men have a moral growth as well as a physical: every day brings its change: their being is perpetually undergoing modifications. The Cromwell of 1650 was not the Cromwell of 1640. There is, of course, always a certain individuality at bottom—it is the same man who works his way; but how changed are his ideas, his feelings, his designs! How many things were lost and acquired! In a word, whatever moment we may select in the life of a man, there is none in which he was such as we behold him when its term is reached.
Nevertheless, the majority of historians have fallen into error upon this point. Because they have acquired a complete idea of a man, they see him such during the whole course of his career: to them it is the same Cromwell who entered parliament in and who died thirty years afterwards in Whitehall palace. And with regard to institutions and general influences, the same mistake is incessantly committed. Let us take care to avoid it. I have sketched in their whole bearing the principles of the church and their consequences, but historically the picture is not correct. The whole has been partial, successive, distributed here and there over space and time. Our entirety, our prompt and systematic concatenation, will not be found in the recital of actual facts. Here one principle shoots forth, there another; all is incomplete, dissimilar, and scattered; and it is only by coming to modern times, to the end of the career, that the whole result is perceived.
I shall proceed to represent the different states through which the church passed from the fifth to the twelfth century. I thereby go to the fountain head; and if I fail in the complete demonstration of the assertions that I have thrown out, yet perhaps enough will be shown to evince them warrantable.
The first state in which the church is found in the fifth century is that of the imperial church, the church of the Roman Empire. At the period the Roman Empire fell, the church was indulging in the idea that her mission was accomplished, her triumph assured. She had then completely vanquished paganism. The last emperor who had assumed the office of pontifex maximus, a pagan dignity, was the Emperor Gratian, who had died at the end of the fourth century. She likewise believed herself at the end of her contest with heretics, especially with the Arians, the principal heretics of the day. The Emperor Theodosius had drawn up against them a peculiar and stringent body of laws at the end of the fourth century. The church, therefore, was in possession of the government, and had triumphed over her two greatest enemies. She was in this prosperous state when the Roman Empire suddenly failed her, and she found herself opposed to other pagans and heretics in the shape of the barbarians, as the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Franks. It was a prodigious fall. It may be easily imagined that a warm attachment for the Empire must have been preserved in the bosom of the church. Thus we see her steadily adhere to what remained of it, the municipal system and absolute power; and when the barbarians were converted, the church attempted to resuscitate the Empire. She addressed herself to the barbarian kings, and besought them to declare themselves Roman emperors, to assume all the rights formerly held by them, and to enter into the same relations with the church as she had had with the Roman Empire. It was especially to this point that the bishops of the fifth and sixth centuries laboured, and they imparted the general feature to the whole church.
It was impossible for this attempt to succeed. There were no means amongst the barbarians to reconstitute the Roman society. Like the civil world around it, therefore, the church itself fell into barbarism. That was its second state. When a comparison is made between the writings of the ecclesiastical chroniclers of the eighth century, and of those in the preceding ages, an immense difference is found. Every vestige of Roman civilisation disappeared, even to the language, and barbarism was at its very acme. For, on the one hand, barbarians entered into the clerical order, and became priests and bishops; and on the other, bishops adopted the barbarian life, and without quitting their bishoprics, constituted themselves chiefs of banditti, roaming over the country, pillaging and fighting, like the companions of Clovis. Gregory of Tours mentions several bishops who passed their lives after this fashion.
Two important facts, nevertheless, received their development in the bosom of this barbarian church. The first was the separation between the spiritual and temporal powers, which principle took its stand at that epoch, as a natural consequence of the state of things. The church not having succeeded in resuscitating the absolute power of the Roman Empire, so as to gain a share of it for herself, was driven to seek safety in independence. She was called upon to defend herself on every side, for she was incessantly threatened. The bishops and priests saw their barbarian neighbours interfere every instant in the affairs of the church, in order to seize upon her riches, her lands, and her power, and they had no other means of defending themselves than alleging—'The spiritual order is completely separated from the temporal, and you have no right to intervene in its affairs.' This principle became the defensive weapon of the church against barbarism in all quarters.