It would be easy to mark the successive stages in European civilization by the pontificates of popes remarkable for their energy of character and the brightness of their abilities. The average length of the reigns of the first thirty-seven was rather less than ten years; and during this time they had to struggle for something infinitely more important than art and science. They were penetrated with a deep sense of their sublime mission, and neither old age, infirmities, nor persecution, paralyzed their labors. "They employed their revenues in maintaining the poor, the sick, the infirm, the widows, orphans, and prisoners, in burying the martyrs, in erecting and embellishing oratories, in comforting and redeeming confessors and captives, and in sending aid of every description to the suffering churches of other provinces." [Footnote 136] Thus, in the wise order of providence, papal civilization began in the moral world before it extended to the intellectual. Yet in the middle of the fourth century, the pope and his coadjutors in different quarters of the globe, presented a striking spectacle, when considered merely in their intellectual aspect. St. Damasus, the thirty-eighth pope, occupied the see of St. Peter. While he zealously promoted ecclesiastical discipline, he won for himself general admiration by his virtues and his writings. His taste for letters carried him beyond the sphere of theological labor; he composed verses, and wrote several heroic poems. [Footnote 137] He was the light of Rome, while St. Augustine, the brightest star that ever adorned the Catholic episcopate, shone at Hippo. St. Ambrose, at the same time, was the glory of Milan; St. Gregory taught at Nyssa; St. Gregory Nazianzen [{643}] wrote in Constantinople; St. Martin evangelized the Gauls; St. Basil composed his "Moralia" and his Treatise on the study of ancient Greek authors at Caesarea; St. Hilary and St. Paulinus bore witness to the truth in Poitiers and Trèves; St. Jerome unfolded the sacred stores of his learning in Thrace, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Pontus; St. Cyril wrote beside his Saviour's tomb; and St. Patrick converted Ireland from the darkness of Druidic paganism.
[Footnote 136: J. Chantrel, "La Royauté Pontifieale," p. 74]
[Footnote 137: St. Jerome, "De Illustr. Eccles. Script.">[
Every faithful prelate at that period--nay, every true Christian; however humble his condition--stood out more prominently from the mass of society than we can now imagine. Christianity has produced among us a certain general level of morality. But it was not so then. The masses were still heathen, and Christians were often in a very small minority. Their principles and conduct, therefore, were so distinct from those around them, that each attracted attention, and exerted more influence than he was aware of. Each Roman Catholic--for we joyfully accept a designation which is erroneously supposed to limit our claims--each Roman Catholic was then a light shining in a dark place, and, in his measure, an apostle of civilization. He promoted science, even though he had never heard its name, for he diminished that amount of moral depravity, on the ruins of which alone science can build her gorgeous fanes. He was member of a church, which, wherever it was established, protested by its institutions against the excessive indulgence of carnal affections. A celibate priesthood, societies of monks and nuns, hermits, and vows of chastity observed by persons living in the world, like St. Cecilia and St. Scholastica, and expiring in the arms of wife or husband without ever having done violence to the pure intentions which marked their bridal--these things formed a spectacle so extraordinary to the heathen, who had been accustomed to make sensual indulgence a feature in their religious solemnities, that it could not but excite inquiry, and issue in affixing a fresh stamp of divinity on the faith of Christ. What would have become of society by this time if the elements of decomposition which then existed had been allowed to work unchecked by the laws of Christian marriage, the prohibition of divorce, and lastly by monasticism--monasticism not forced on any one as a duty, but freely chosen as a privilege--a higher and purer state, best suited for communion with God and activity in his service!
In the fifth century, the efforts which had been made by Popes Innocent, Boniface, Celestine, and Sixtus III. for the conversion of the barbarians who overran the fairest portions of Europe, were continued with extraordinary perseverance by the great St. Leo. He formed the most conspicuous figure in his age. No element of greatness was wanting to his character, and the complicated miseries of the times only threw into stronger relief the energy of his mind and will. His reign, from first to last, is a chapter in the history of civilization. Attila, crossing the Jura mountains with his numerous hordes, fell upon Italy. Valentinian III. fled before him, and Leo alone had weight and courage equal to the task of interceding with the resistless devastator. On the 11th of June, 452, he set forth to meet him, and found him on the banks of the Mincio. Rome was saved, and with it religion and the hopes of society. Three years after, Genseric with his Vandals stood before its gates; and though Leo could not this time altogether stay the destroyer, he saved the lives of the citizens, and Rome itself from being burnt. If she had not been possessed of a hidden and supernatural life, far transcending that idea of a civilizing agent which it so abundantly includes, she would already have been razed to the ground, as she was afterward by the Ostrogoths under Totila, and from neither devastation would she ever have been [{644}] able to revive. At this moment she would be numbered with Nineveh and Sidon, the foxes would bark upon the Aventine as when Belisarius rode through the deserted Forum, and shepherds would fold their flocks upon the hills where St. Peter's and St. John Lateran now dazzle the eye with splendor. [Footnote 138]
[Footnote 138: Monsignor Manning, "The Eternity of Rome."--Lamp, Nov. 1863.]
Happily great popes never fail. All are great in their power and influence, and almost all have been good, while from time to time Providence raises up some one also who makes an impression on his age, and is acknowledged by friends and foes alike to be gifted with those qualities which entitle him to the epithet "great." Pelagus I. supplied the Romans with provisions during a long siege, and after the example of St. Leo, obtained from Totila some mitigation of his barbarous severities; John III. and Benedict I. ministered largely to the Italians who were dying of want, and driven from their homes by the remorseless Lombards; and writers the most adverse to the papacy--Gibbon, Daunou, [Footnote 139] Sismondi--testify to the disinterested benevolence of these and other pontiffs during the church's struggle with northern devastators. Just a century and a half had elapsed since Leo the Great's elevation, when St. Gregory ascended the papal throne amid the people's acclamation. He was at the same time doctor, legislator, and statesman; and the plain facts of his pontificate might be so related as to appear a panegyric rather than a sober history. In the midst of personal weakness and suffering, the strength of his soul and intellect were felt in every quarter of Christendom and while he composed his "Pastoral" and his "Dialogues," or negotiated with the Lombards in behalf of his afflicted country, news reached him frequently of the success of his missions amongst distant and barbarous people. [Footnote 140] To one of these we owe the conversion of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers; and the results it produced extort from Macaulay the admission that the spiritual supremacy assumed by the pope effected more good than harm, and that the Roman Church, by uniting all men in a bond of brotherhood, and teaching all their responsibility before God, deserves to be spoken of with respect by philosophers and philanthropists. [Footnote 141]
[Footnote 139: "Essai Historique," t. i.]
[Footnote 140: See Chantrel, "Hist. Populaire des Papes," t. v.]
[Footnote 141: "Hist. of England," chap. i.]