Fig. 203.—The Christian Religion assisting at the death of Jesus Christ. Crowned and triumphant, the figure holds in one hand the standard of the cross, and in the other the chalice of the eucharist.—Sculpture in Strasburg Cathedral (Thirteenth Century).—From a Photograph by Charles de Winter, of Strasburg.
The emperors, converted to Christianity, ere long became the opponents of the popes; “laying aside the sword of defence for disputations on theology.” Their weakness handed the West over to the Germanic races; primitive society, whose organization still remained heathen, despite the change in religious belief, was swallowed up by the invasion of these Northerners, whose institutions facilitated the triumph of the ideas of political liberty and equality, the germ of which was deposited in the Gospel.
Fig. 204.—The spiritual and the temporal powers dependent upon Jesus Christ, who is handing to St. Peter the keys and to Constantine the standard surmounted by the cross.—Mosaic of the Tenth Century in the Basilica of St. John of Lateran, at Rome.
The papacy of the Middle Ages was first made illustrious by Leo I., surnamed the Great. Called to be Bishop of Rome by the people and the clergy in 440, when twenty years of age, he rendered the greatest possible services to civilisation during the twenty-two years of his reign. His preachings, his writings, his decrees, aimed chiefly at the education of his clergy and his flock, at the maintenance of the Nicene Creed (Fig. 206), the moral improvement of the clergy, and the upholding of discipline. He fought the heretics with equal energy and authority; he continued the struggle of orthodoxy against the errors which attacked the dogma of the Incarnation, which is the basis of Christianity, and upheld with vigilant perseverance the primitive doctrine of the Church, so clearly defined and proclaimed during the reign of one of his predecessors at the Council of Ephesus in 431. He was, above all things, a skilful diplomatist and a great politician. He firmly maintained the apostolic pre-eminence of Rome over Constantinople—a pre-eminence which was, moreover, recognised by the Council of Chalcedon.
Fig. 205.—St. Peter.—Fac-simile of a Wood Engraving of the Old Masters, by Hans Baldung, otherwise Grum (1470–1550), in the National Library, Paris.
Fig. 206.—A Council held in the ninth or tenth century to commemorate the second Council of Nice.—From a Miniature of a menologium in the Vatican Library (Manuscript of the Tenth Century).