It seems as if Providence had been pleased to choose a climate where mankind could make a trial of their strength vivified and sustained by grace. It was under a sky apparently the most fatal for the corruption of the soul, in countries where the relaxation of the body naturally leads to relaxation of mind, and where even the air that they breathed inclined to pleasure,—it was there that the greatest energy of mind was displayed, that the greatest austerities were practised, and the pleasures of the senses were proscribed and banished with the greatest severity. The solitaries fixed their abodes in deserts within the influence of the balmy breezes of the neighboring lands; from their mountains and sandy hills their eyes could distinguish the peaceful and smiling countries which invited to pleasure and enjoyment; like the Christian virgin who abandoned her obscure cave to go and place herself in the hollow of a rock, whence she saw the palace of her fathers overflowing with riches, pleasures, and delights, while she herself lamented like a solitary dove in the holes of the rock. From that time all climates were good for virtue; austerity of morals did not at all depend on the proximity of the equatorial line; the morality of man, like man himself, could live in all climates. When the most perfect continence was practised in so wonderful a manner under the sky which we have described, the monogamy of Christianity could well be established and preserved. When, in the secrets of the Eternal, the time had arrived for calling a people to the light of truth, it mattered not whether they lived amid the snows of Scandinavia, or on the burning plains of India. The spirit of the divine laws was not to be confined within the narrow circle which the Esprit des Lois of Montesquieu has attempted to assign it.
[CHAPTER XL.]
ON RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THE EAST.
The influence exercised by the lives of the solitaries of the East over religion and morality is beyond a doubt; in truth it is not easy to appreciate it in all its extent and in all its effects; but it is not the less true and real on that account. It has not marked the doctrines of humanity like those thundering events the effects of which are often inadequate to their promises; but it is like a beneficial rain which, diffusing itself gently over the thirsty earth, fertilizes the meadows and the fields. If it were possible for man to comprehend and distinguish the vast assemblage of causes which have contributed to raise his mind, to give him a lively consciousness of his immortality, and to render a return to his ancient degradation almost impossible, perhaps it would be found that the wonderful phenomenon of the Eastern solitaries had a considerable share in that immense change. Let us not forget that from thence did the great men of the East receive their inspiration; St. Jerome lived in a cave at Bethlehem, and the conversion of St. Augustine was accompanied by a holy emulation excited in his mind by reading the life of St. Anthony the Abbot.
The monasteries which were founded in the East and West in imitation of these early establishments of the solitaries, were a continuation of them, although with many differences, in consequence of times and circumstances. Thence came the Basils, the Gregories, the Chrysostoms, and so many distinguished men, the glory of the Church. If a miserable spirit of dispute, ambition, and pride, sowing the seeds of discord, had not prepared the rupture which was to deprive the East of the vivifying influence of the Roman See, perhaps the ancient monasteries of the East would have served, like those of the West, to prepare a social regeneration, by forming one people out of the conquerors and the conquered.
It is evident that the want of unity was one of the causes of the weakness of the East; I will not deny that their position was very different from ours; the enemy opposed to them did not at all resemble the barbarians of the North; but I am not sure that it was easier to subdue the latter than it was to rule the nations by whom the East was conquered. In the East, the victory remained with the aggressors, as with us; but a conquered nation is not dead; its defeat does not take from it all the great advantages which are able, by giving it a moral ascendency over the conquerors, to prepare, in silence, their transformation, if not their expulsion. The northern barbarians conquered the South of Europe; but the South, in its turn, triumphed over them by the Christian religion; the barbarians were not driven out, but they were transformed. Spain was conquered by the Arabs, and the Arabs could not be transformed; but they were driven out in the end. If the East had preserved unity, if Constantinople and the other episcopal sees had remained subject to Rome like those of the West; in a word, if all the East had been contented to be a member of a great body, instead of having the ambitious pretensions of being a great body itself, I consider it certain that, after the conquest of the Saracens, a struggle, at once intellectual, moral, and physical, would have been engaged in; a profound change would have been worked in the conquered nation, or the struggle would have ended by the conquering barbarians being driven back to their deserts.
It will be said that the transformation of the Arabs was the work of ages. But was not that of the barbarians of the North so likewise? Was this great work finished by their conversion to Christianity? A considerable part of them were Arians; and besides, they understood the Christian ideas so ill, they found the practice of Gospel morality so difficult, that for a long time it was almost as difficult to treat with them as with nations of a different religion. On the other hand, let us not forget that the irruption of the barbarians was not a solitary event; an event which, when once finished, did not recur; it was continued for ages. But the force of the religious principle in the West was such, that all the invading nations were compelled to retire, or were forced to bend to the ideas and manners of the countries they had recently acquired. The defeat of the hordes of Attila, the victories of Charlemagne over the Saxons and the other nations beyond the Rhine, the successive conversion of the various idolatrous nations of the North by means of the missionaries sent from Rome,—in fine, the vicissitudes and the final result of the invasions of the Normans, and the ultimate triumph of the Christians of Spain over the Moors after a war of eight centuries, are so many decisive proofs of what I have just laid down—viz. that the West, vivified and fortified by Catholic unity, had had the secret of assimilating and appropriating to itself all that it was not able to reject, and the force to reject all that it could not make its own.
This is what was wanting in the East: the enterprise was not more difficult there than in the West. If the West alone was able to liberate the Holy Sepulchre, the West and East together would never have lost it; or, at least, after having freed it, they would have kept it for ever. The same cause prevented the monasteries of the East from attaining to the same vitality and energy which distinguished those of the West; therefore, they have always been seen to grow weak with time, without producing any thing great, and capable of preventing social dissolution, of silently preparing and slowly elaborating regeneration for posterity, after the calamities with which it pleased Providence to afflict ancient times. He who has seen in history the brilliant commencement of the Eastern monasteries, cannot behold without pain the decline of their strength and splendor in the course of ages, after the ravages caused by invasion, wars, and finally, the deadly influence of the schism of Constantinople; the ancient abodes of so many men illustrious for science and sanctity gradually disappeared from the page of history like expiring lamps, or the dying fires of an abandoned camp.
Immense injury was done to all the branches of human knowledge by this decline, which, after having rendered the East barren, ended by destroying it. If we pay attention, we shall see that, amid the great shocks and revolutions which disturbed Europe, Africa, and Asia, the natural refuge for the remains of ancient knowledge, was not the West, but the East. It was not in our monasteries that the books, and other intellectual riches, of which quieter and happier generations were one day to enjoy the benefit, should naturally have been preserved; this, it would seem, belonged to the monasteries of the eastern countries; those lands, where the most different civilizations were brought together and commingled as on neutral ground; those regions, where the human mind had displayed the greatest activity, and taken the highest flights; where the most abundant treasures of tradition and sciences, and the beauties of art were accumulated; in a word, it was in this vast mart of all the riches of the civilization and refinement of all nations,—it was in this sanctuary and museum of antiquity, that the intellectual patrimony of future generations ought to have been preserved.
Let it not, however, be supposed that the monasteries of the East were of no service to the human mind; the science and literature of Europe are still mindful of the impulse which was communicated to them, by the arrival of the precious materials thrown upon the coasts of Italy, after the taking of Constantinople: but even these riches, brought to Europe by a few men, driven upon our shores by a tempest, came to us, like the remains of a shipwrecked crew, who, after having with difficulty saved their lives from the fury of the waves, have only preserved in their benumbed hands some gold and a few precious stones.