Thus fell the power of Rome, but not her influence, for the great influence of paganism was the excellence of its literature. Though the Augustan writers were no more, yet Ammianus Marcellinus wrote history with the spirit of a soldier, and Vegetius wrote the precepts of the art of conquering. Symmachus was thought to rival Pliny in his letters; and, at the same time, Claudian, the last and not the least of Latin poets, succeeded Lucan in those historical epics so popular at Rome. He celebrated the war of Gildo and the victories of Stilicho over the Goths in verses equal to the "Pharsalia;" and his invectives against Eutropius and Rufinus, in defense of Stilicho his patron, are still considered masterpieces. He ignored not only Christianity but Christian writers, though St. Ambrose was at Milan and St. Augustin at Carthage, and wrote gravely of mythology in an age when few pagans believed its fables. He was an Egyptian by birth, and trained in the schools of Alexandria, and was patronized by the Christian emperor Honorius, who erected to him—as to the best of poets— a statue in Trajan's Forum. Yet Claudian had truly pagan morals; he praised the vices of his patron Stilicho, and when he was murdered he wrote a poem to his enemy; "he misused both panegyric and satire, the powers of a good understanding and a rich fancy and flowing versification, which place him, after an interval of three hundred years, among the poets of ancient Rome." But while Claudian celebrated the conflict of Rome with the barbarians, he perceived not the mighty war between Christianity and paganism; and while our Lord and his blessed Mother [{780}] triumphed over the idols and their temples, he wasted his poetry in their praise; and when he recited a poem in the presence of Honorius and the senate, he spoke to them as if they believed in mythology. Ozanam gives one remarkable proof of the hold over men's minds retained by paganism. When Honorius took possession of the palace of Augustus on Mount Palatine, he assembled the senate, and in the presence of all these great persons, many of whom were Christian, Claudian unrolled the parchment whereon his verses were written in letters of gold, and addressed Honorius as resembling Jupiter conquering the giants. And again, when he had the office of showing the splendors of Rome to Honorius, when he visited it for the first time (404), he spoke of the city as a pagan in the language of idolatry. And the poet Rutilius, though born in Gaul, idolized Rome. "Rome was the last divinity of the ancients. Mother of men and gods" (he calls her, as he wrote his "Itinerary to Gaul"), "the sun rises and sets in thy dominions; thou hast made one country of many nations—one city of the world. Thy year is an eternal spring; the winter dares not stay thy joy." So powerful was the influence of pagan Rome over a foreigner; and that influence may be yet better perceived in the Christian poet Sidonius Apollinaris, who, though brought up, like Ausonius, in the Gallic schools, and sound in faith, could not write hexameters without mythology. The only language of poetry was pagan; and when he wrote to St. Patient, bishop of Lyons (who fed his people in famine), he compared him to Triptolemus.
The first antagonist of the Church, in her task of regenerating society, was paganism; the second, barbarism. Charlemagne constructed, on the ruins of the Roman empire, an empire of enlightened Christianity; but another decadence followed. The Normans sacked monasteries, and burned the Holy Scriptures, together with Aristotle and Virgil. The Huns destroyed the very grass of the fields. The Lombards seemed to be sent for the destruction of all that was left of human kind. Ozanam says, "Providence loves to surprise." The monks who escaped the Norman pirates preached to them amidst the ashes of their monasteries, and the Normans became Christians. Then arose the basilicas of Palermo and Monreale in Sicily, and the churches of Italy, Normandy, and England. St. Adalbert converted the Huns, and they defended Christendom against the vices of Byzantium and the invasions of Mohammedans. On the ruins of the Roman empire arose the kingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy. Of this new empire, feudality and chivalry were the opposite elements. Feudality was the principle of division, chivalry that of fraternity; and these remodelled society.
The calamities attending this final disruption of the empire interrupted study, and learning was confined to the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, from whence missionaries carried not only religion but learning into the countries where they were almost extinguished by the Goths. Germany had three great monasteries—Nouvelle Corbie, Fulda, and St. Gall. At this last monastery was preserved the classic literature. Monks studied grammar and wrote AEneids. The royal Hedwige introduced the study of Greek at St. Gull; and Ozanam relates it in one of those graphic incidents which are worth volumes. A new period began with Gregory VII. When he said, "Lord, I have loved justice, and hated iniquity; wherefore I die in exile," a bishop replied, "You cannot die in exile, because God has given you the earth for your jurisdiction, and the nations for your inheritance." Then followed the crusades, that wonderful and providential means by which the civilization of the East was brought into the service of the Western Church. They destroyed feudalism; for all who fought gained glory, whether serf or noble. [{781}] Chivalric poetry arose. Germany had its Niebelungen, Spain its Cid. Then arose the arts around Giotto and the tomb of St. Francis. Christian architecture was not Roman. The small temples and large amphitheatres, etc., were replaced by large churches, public halls, schools and hospitals, a small town round a large cathedral. There were three capitals: Rome, the seat of the Papacy; Aix-la-Chapelle, the seat of empire; and Paris, of the schools.
How paganism perished is perhaps one of the most useful lectures in the course, as it bears upon the doubts which are still felt by some as to the use of pagan books in Christian education. Ozanam shows that the monks preserved by transcribing the works of Seneca and Cicero, and that St. Augustin brought Plato and Aristotle into Christian schools; that St. Augustin, St. Jerome, and St. Basil preserved the heathen poets till Christian poets had learnt their art; nay, how the Church protected the Gallic bards and German scalds, and taught them to sing the praises of God. St. Gregory preserved the Saxon temples, and even adapted their rites and festivals to be used in Christian worship, that what had been perverted to the service of devils might be restored to God.
The contrast—the abyss—between the middle ages and the renaissance has been exaggerated. There was literary paganism in the ages of faith. The troubadours sang of mythology, and the language of idolatry was purified by its application to the praises of the martyrs, as is shown in the poems of St. Paulinus. When the Church emerged from persecution, the Roman schools became Christian; and when the Lombards threatened to plunge Christendom in darkness, there were two lamps still burning in the night—episcopal and monastic teaching; and in these, by degrees, the pagan books and pagan literature were replaced by Christian works, in which, however, there were still abundant traces of their pagan masters.
It is in a fragment that Ozanam speaks of the way in which the valuable part of antiquity was preserved. "When winter begins, it seems as if vegetation would perish. The wind sweeps away the flowers and leaves; but the seeds remain. The providence of God watches over them. They are defended by a husk against the cold, and have wings which bear them to congenial places, where they spring again. So, when the ages of barbarism came, the winter of human nature, it seems as if poetry and all the vegetation of thought would perish; but it was preserved in the dry questions of the schools through three or four centuries; and when the time and place came, the man of genius was raised up, and in his hands they grew again. Such was St. Thomas of Aquin, the champion of dogmatism; and St. Bonaventure, of mysticism; and Christendom had its own philosophy." Perhaps we do not realize sufficiently the despair which was the lot of reflecting heathens. They sought the aid of philosophy to console them "for hopeless deterioration from a golden to an iron age; but philosophy could only teach that the world was perishing, and that the pride of man must preserve him from erring and perishing with its possessions. The heathens knew not the idea of progress; but the gospel teaches and commands human perfectibility, and says to each, Be ye perfect; and to all, Let the Church grow into the fulness of Christ." It was faith, hope, and charity which produced progress.
And, first, faith set free the human mind from the ignorance of God. Idolatry was not only that men gave to devils the worship which they owed to God; it was the love of what is mortal and perishable, instead of what is spiritual and eternal; it sunk mankind into materialism and sensuality. "Painters and sculptors represented only corporeal beauty: there was no expression in the figures of Phidias or Parrhasius." Ozanam shows how Christian art used what is material [{782}] only as symbolism, and expressed by form and color what is invisible and celestial; while poetry was rescued from degradation, and became what it really is, the noblest aspiration after truth of which man in his present state is capable. Philosophy was freed from the trammels of false systems, and speculated securely and deeply on the divine and human nature. "Origen formed in the Catechetical schools of Alexandria the science of theology," and in "the golden age of this new science St. Jerome taught exegesis, St. Augustin dogmatic, and St. Ambrose moral theology. St. Anselm was tormented by the desire of finding a short proof that God exists, and with him began metaphysics." These were the rich treasures which lay concealed in the scholastic teaching of the middle ages.
As theology and Christian philosophy had sprung from faith, so hope extended knowledge, because men labored with fresh vigor in improving science. "The course of ages offers no grander spectacle than that of man taking possession of nature by knowledge." In the seventh century the Byzantine monks pierced the steppes of Central Asia, and passed the wall of China; monks took the message of the Pope to the Khan before Marco Polo visited the East; and monks, in the eighth century, visited Iceland and even America. It was the calculations of the middle ages which emboldened Columbus to discover a new world and new creation; and when Magellan sailed round the globe, "man was master of his abode." He goes on: "When man had conquered the earth, he could not rest; Copernicus burst through the false heavens of Ptolemy; the telescope discovered the secrets of the stars, and calculation numbered their laws and orbits in the abyss of heaven. Woe be to those who are led away by such a sight from God! The stars told his glory to David, and so they did also to Kepler and to Newton."
It was by the third and greatest of the theological virtues, charity, that the moral as well as the intellectual nature of man was regenerated, though the change was wrought, perhaps, by slower degrees. Slavery of the most revolting kind—that slavery which ignores the soul and the reason, as well as the social rights of the slave, was replaced by liberty, oppression and injustice by laws which are still based upon the letter of the Roman laws; but administered with the equity of the Christian code. Cruelty and indifference to human life, as shown in the national passion for gladiatorial games, was replaced by gentleness and all good works; and the luxury of palaces, baths, etc., was replaced by gorgeous churches and hospitals. Education, which had been restricted to the few, was thrown open to all by free schools and by Christian preaching. Above all, the daughters of Eve, who were degraded below the condition of the very slaves, were raised to be helps-meet for Christians, either by the sacrament of marriage or by the holiness of virginity.
In speaking of the reconstruction of intellectual action in the civilization of Western Christendom, Ozanam has a grand and striking thought, that the first step to this was uniformity of language. The confusion of tongues which began at Babel was silenced throughout the world by the universal use of the Latin language, which was adopted by the Church; and that language, which was formed to express all the passions and vices, as well as the strength and intelligence of man, conveyed, by the words of St. Gelasius and St. Gregory, the most sublime devotion; by those of St. Jerome, the deep senses of the Holy Scriptures; and when the Christian intellect was free to develop itself, there arose that Christian eloquence in preaching the gospel which influenced, for the first time, all ranks and all dispositions of men.