History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

This view of the relation of the monasteries to the moral evolution in Western civilization may be accepted by the student of morals as a correct interpretation of medieval monastic history, while at the same time he admits the truth of Lecky’s contention that there was a self-regarding motive in Christian asceticism—it was personal salvation, he says, that the monk was primarily seeking—which made the morality of the Christian saints inferior to the morality of the heroes of Greece and Rome. It is undoubtedly true that many entered upon the monastic life from self-regarding motives; but it is also true that constant meditation upon religious themes, and especially the holding ever before the imagination the ideal of the Master, who for love of man made the supreme self-sacrifice of the Cross, had as a natural result the deepening of the altruistic feelings, the sensitizing of the conscience, and the moving of the will to self-denying service for others. As a consequence the spirit of true self-renunciation was often exalted among the recluses of the cloister to an unwonted degree, and thus it came about in the course of time that many who out of solicitude for their own salvation had sought the solitude of the cloister are later found in the outside world, going about, in imitation of their Master, doing good, ministering in the spirit of absolute self-forgetfulness to the needs, temporal as well as spiritual, of the poor, the afflicted, the heavy-laden, and the life-weary. A large part of the philanthropic work of the Church during the Middle Ages was carried on by the monks.

This humanitarian spirit, this cloister conscience of monasticism, was bequeathed to society at large. Thus may the direct line of descent of the modern social conscience be traced through the medieval monasteries.

The new conscience condemns and finally suppresses the gladiatorial games

One of the earliest and the most important of the moral reforms effected by the new conscience in the institutions of pagan Rome was the suppression of the gladiatorial games. For almost seven hundred years preceding the triumph of Christianity in the Roman world, these spectacles had formed the favorite amusement of the Roman people without having awakened any special moral protest. Some of the pagan philosophers and moralists, particularly Seneca and Plutarch, had denounced them as opposed to the sentiment of humanity, but their protest had found no echo in the common conscience of the age. As a rule the pagan moralists saw nothing in them to condemn.

It was reserved for the Christian moralists to awaken the conscience to a recognition of the criminality of these cruel spectacles. It was particularly the Christian teaching of the sacredness of human life that contributed powerfully to create the new ethical feeling as to the immoral character of these amusements, and prepared the way for their final abolition (404 A.D.) through the protest made by the monk Telemachus and sealed by his martyr death.

Speaking of the significance of the abolition of the gladiatorial games, Lecky declares that “there is scarcely any other reform so important in the moral history of mankind.”[645] One thing which enhanced greatly the importance of the reform was its timeliness. Just at the moment of the suppression of these spectacles the Germanic tribes were passing the frontiers of the Empire and adopting the customs and institutions of the Romans. Had not these amusements been abolished or put under the ban of the moral feelings before the final catastrophe to the Empire, the barbarian tastes and fighting instincts of this new race would have led to the eager introduction of these sports into all the northern countries, just as certainly as the humane spirit of the Greeks prevented their general introduction into Grecian lands. When we recall the indurating and dehumanizing effects of these amusements upon the Roman populace, we realize the importance and timeliness of the reform which kept the barbarian nations free from their brutalizing and deadening influence.

The new conscience condemns infanticide and self-destruction

Equally emphatic was the condemnation which the new conscience pronounced on infanticide and self-destruction. We have seen in our review of the morality of the classical peoples how almost universal was the practice of the exposition of infants, and how slight was the moral condemnation which the custom evoked even from philosophers and moralists. When the practice was prohibited, usually the prohibition sprang from considerations of a prudential or economic character rather than from scruples of conscience.

But the Christian teachers, proclaiming the sacredness of human life and the immortal destiny of every human soul, declared the destruction of the infant as sinful as the taking of the life of the adult. It is to this teaching doubtless that is, in large measure, due the existence in Christian lands of a conscience which condemns the destruction of the newborn babe as an act of deep moral turpitude.

It was the same Christian doctrine of the sacredness of human life, along with the teaching of the duty of resignation, that created also a new moral feeling in regard to suicide. We have seen how the conscience of the classical peoples in general passed no condemnation upon the act of self-destruction if life had in any way become a burden; but the Church taught that suicide is the same as murder, indeed a greater sin because it destroys not only the body but also the soul. Some Christian moralists maintained that “Judas committed a greater sin in killing himself than in betraying his master Christ.”[646]