Perhaps this may not move our surprise when we glance at the condition of morality existing throughout the Empire in the second quarter of the fifth century, as sketched by a zealous churchman of the period. Salvianus, Bishop of Marseilles, was a native of Trèves. Three times he witnessed the sack of that unfortunate city by the successive barbarian hordes which swept over Western Europe, and he lifts up his voice, like Jeremiah, to bewail the sins of his people, and the unutterable misfortunes which were the punishment but not the cure of those sins. Nothing can be conceived more utterly licentious and depraved than the whole framework of society as described by him, with such details as preclude us from believing that holy indignation or pious sensibility led him to exaggerate the outlines or to darken the shades of the picture. The criminal and frivolous pleasures of a decrepit civilization left no thought for the absorbing duties of the day or the fearful trials of the morrow. Unbridled lust and unblushing indecency admitted no sanctity in the marriage-tie. The rich and powerful established harems, in the recesses of which their wives lingered, forgotten, neglected, and despised. The banquet, the theatre, and the circus exhausted what little strength and energy were left by domestic excesses. The poor aped the vices of the rich, and hideous depravity reigned supreme and invited the vengeance of Heaven. Such rare souls as could remain pure amid the prevailing contamination would naturally take refuge in the contrast of severe asceticism, and resolutely seek absolute seclusion from a world whose every touch was pollution. The secular clergy, however, drawn from the ranks of a society so utterly corrupt, and enjoying the wealth and station which rendered their position an object for the ambition of the worldly, could not avoid sharing to a great extent the guilt of their flocks, whose sins were more easily imitated than eradicated. Nor does Salvianus confine his denunciations to Gaul and Spain. Africa and Italy are represented as even worse, the prevalence of unnatural crimes lending a deeper disgust to the rivalry in iniquity. Rome was the sewer of the nations, the centre of abomination of the world, where vice openly assumed its most repulsive form, and wickedness reigned unchecked and supreme.
It is true that the descriptions of Salvianus are intended to include the whole body of the people, and that his special references to the church are but few. Those occasional references, however, are not of a nature to exempt it from sharing in the full force of his indignation. When he pronounces the Africans to be utterly licentious, he excepts those who have been regenerated in religion—but these he declares to be so few in number that it is difficult to believe them Africans. What hope, he asks, can there be for the people when even in the church itself the most diligent search can scarce discover one chaste amid so many thousands: and when imperial Carthage was tottering to its fall under the assaults of the besieging Vandals, he describes its clergy as wantoning in the circus and the theatre—those without falling under the sword of the barbarian, those within abandoning themselves to sensuality.[150] This, be it remembered, is that African church which had just been so carefully nurtured in the purest asceticism for thirty years, under the unremitting care of Augustin, who died while his episcopal city of Hippo was encircled with the leaguer of the Vandals.
Nor were these disorders attributable to the irruption of the Barbarians, for Salvianus sorrowfully contrasts their purity of morals with the reckless dissoluteness of the Romans. The respect for female virtue, inherent in the Teutonic tribes, has no warmer admirer than he, and he recounts with wonder how the temptations of luxury and vice, spread before them in the wealthy cities which they sacked, excited only their disgust, and how, so far from yielding to the allurements that surrounded them, they sternly set to work to reform the depravity of their new subjects, and enacted laws to repress at least the open manifestations which shocked their untutored virtue.
When corruption so ineradicable pervaded every class, we can scarce wonder that in the story of the trial of Sixtus III., in 440, for the seduction of a nun, when his accusers were unable to substantiate the charge, he is said to have addressed the synod assembled in judgment by repeating to them the story of the woman taken in adultery, and the decision of Christ. Whether it were intended to be regarded as a confession, or as a sarcasm on the prelates around him, whom he thus challenged to cast the first stone, the tale whether true or false is symptomatic of the time.[151]
As regards the East, if the accusations brought against Ibas, Metropolitan of Edessa, at the Synod of Berytus in 448,[152] are worthy of credit, the Oriental church was not behind the West in the effrontery of sin.
[VI.]
THE EASTERN CHURCH.
During the period which we have been considering, there had gradually arisen a divergence between the Christians of the East and of the West. The Arianism of Constantius opposed to the orthodoxy of Constans lent increased development to the separation which the division of the Empire had commenced. The rapid growth of the New Rome founded on the shores of the Bosporus gave to the East a political metropolis which rendered it independent of the power of Rome, and the patriarchate there erected absorbed to itself the supremacy of the old Apostolic Sees, which had previously divided the ecclesiastical strength of the East. In the West, the Bishop of Rome was unquestionably the highest dignitary, and when the separation relieved him of the rivalry of prelates equal in rank, he was enabled to acquire an authority over the churches of the Occident undreamed of in previous ages. As yet, however, there was little pretension of extending that power over the East, and though the ceaseless quarrels which raged in Antioch, Constantinople, and Alexandria enabled him frequently to intervene as arbiter, still he had not yet assumed the tone of a judge without appeal or of an autocratic lawgiver.
Though five hundred years were still to pass before the Greek schism formally separated Constantinople from the communion of Rome, yet already, by the close of the fourth century, the characteristics which ultimately led to that schism were beginning to develop themselves with some distinctness. The sacerdotal spirit of the West showed itself in the formalism which loaded religion with rules of observance and discipline enforced with Roman severity. The inquiring and metaphysical tendencies of the East discovered unnumbered doubtful points of belief, which were argued with exhaustive subtlety and supported by relentless persecution. However important it might be for any polemic to obtain for his favorite dogma the assent of the Roman bishop, whose decisions on such points thus constantly acquired increased authority, yet when the Pope undertook to issue laws and promulgate rules of discipline, whatever force they had was restricted to the limits of the Latin tongue. Accordingly, we find that the decretals of Siricius and Innocent I. produced no effect throughout the East. Asceticism continued to flourish there as in its birthplace, but it was voluntary, and there is no trace of any official attempt to render it universally imperative. The canon of Nicæa of course was law, and the purity of the church required its strict observance, to avoid scandals and immorality;[153] but beyond this and the ancient rules excluding digami and prohibiting marriage in orders no general laws were insisted on, and each province or patriarchate was allowed to govern itself in this respect. How little the Eastern prelates thought of introducing compulsory celibacy is shown by the fact that at the second general council, held at Constantinople in 381, only four or five years before the decretals of Siricius, there is no trace of any legislation on the subject; and this acquires increased significance when we observe that although this council has always been reckoned Œcumenic, and has enjoyed full authority throughout the church universal, yet out of one hundred and fifty bishops who signed the acts, but one—a Spanish prelate—was from the West.
This avoidance of action was not merely an omission of surplusage. Had the disposition existed to erect the custom of celibacy into a law, there was ample cause for legislation on the subject. Epiphanius, who died in the year 403 at a very advanced age, probably compiled his “Panarium” not long after this period; he belonged to the extreme school of ascetics, and lost no opportunity of asserting the most rigid rule with regard to virginity and continence, which he considered to be the base and corner-stone of the church. While assuming celibacy to be the rule for all concerned in the functions of the priesthood, he admits that in many places it was not observed, on account of the degradation of morals or of the impossibility of obtaining enough ministers irreprehensible in character to satisfy the needs of the faithful.[154]