Later, he forbade soldiers to become gladiators,[896] and Valentinian exempted Christians from the punishment of the arena.[897] Gibbon gives the story of St. Telemachus to mark the final abolition of these contests by Honorius[898] in 404, though Bury points out that there is evidence of such shows some years later. As late as the fourth century we still find a man like Symmachus spending £80,000 on games for his son’s praetorship,[899] but, on the whole, the influence of the Christian ideal made for greater frugality and gentleness.
This influence was also seen in the increase of charities. The bishops, for example, often distributed corn among the people when times were bad.[900] That misuse was made of this spirit is seen from the strict law of Valentinian against mendicancy;[901] but the misuse is not so serious as the previous lack of charitable spirit.
The feeling of the Christians against slavery and the manual labour of the monks tended to destroy the aristocratic prejudice against practical work, and made for a simpler and more natural life. The artificial position in which the pagan world had placed women was to some extent remedied along the same line of the brotherhood of man. Jerome’s correspondence with Paula and Eustochium is an indication of this new attitude.[902] Naturalness also resulted from a reaction against the exaggerated centralization of the Empire, and was manifested in a development of individuality. The Western Church occasionally showed that it could stand up to the emperor.[903] When Constantius commanded that all the bishops assembled at the synod of Ariminum should be given their food (annonae et cellaria) the bishops of Gaul and Britain refused the gift, fearing the diplomacy of Constantius because ‘it did not seem fitting. They refused the imperial support and preferred to live at their own expense.’[904]
There was, therefore, a considerable and increasing independence on the part of the Church. Yet Church and State co-operated in many things. One of these points of co-operation, which was most important for education, was the holding of councils. First the Council of Arles (314), representing the Western Church, and then the Council of Nicea (325), representing the whole Church, was summoned by Constantine. And the influence of these councils in clearing away provincial prejudices and producing breadth of vision must have reacted very favourably on education, though the bishops of Gaul, owing to the larger extent of their bishoprics, did not have that close relation of teacher and pupil with their congregations which was the case in the East.
With all this in her favour the Church drew into her service men of the best blood and intellect. The nobility became the holders of the bishoprics, and the Christians consented. Indeed, they did more than consent. They sometimes demanded it, as in the case of Ambrose, feeling, no doubt, the value of having a man of high social rank to protect them in the political world. Men like Sidonius who had been living quite a ‘worldly’ life became bishops, moved, one is inclined to suspect, rather by the sense of power than the spirit of devotion. Thus aristocratic ideas were introduced into the Church and the bishop’s office was sometimes made hereditary, as in the case of Eucherius and his sons Salonius and Veranius. These aristocrats were at the same time the intellectuals of their time, and men like Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who was consulted by all the writers of the South,[905] Arbogast of Trèves, afterwards Bishop of Chartres,[906] of whose learning, as of that of Auspicius, Sidonius thought much,[907] Patiens of Lyons,[908] Faustus of Riez,[909] Mamertus of Vienne,[910] Graecus of Marseilles,[911] Perpetuus of Tours,[912] and many others, all friends of Sidonius and therefore of culture, shifted the balance of intellect from the pagan to the Christian side of society.
And yet, in spite of these hopeful signs, this growth in the power of ideals, we feel that the Church in Gaul did not transform the Roman Empire. Power the Church obtained, but found it a perilous possession. For with power came the whole host of political corruptions which had found a home in the imperial system, and entered, unsuspected, along the paths which custom had made. In becoming, to some extent, the successor of the Empire, the Church exposed herself to imperial dangers. Politics tended to overshadow principles. At least one of the two invasions of which Montalembert speaks[913] was needed in order that the Church should save Society—that of the monks from the South.
2. The Persistence of Rhetoric: Tradition and Reaction
The development of Christianity, then, in the fourth and fifth centuries, largely takes the form of a struggle between the old and the new. Everywhere in the ecclesiastical society there are, inevitably, survivals, and they loom particularly large on account of two factors: the entry of Roman law into the Church, and the assumption of Church leadership by large numbers of the aristocracy.
It is natural, therefore, that we should find survivals in education too, and the extent to which we find them is evidence of the strength and the universality of the rhetorical tradition. And we need to see this tradition in its proper perspective before we can fully appreciate the significance of Gallic education in our period.