It would hardly be possible to point out in more positive terms the doctrine which became the groundwork of Christendom in after times, a doctrine which a St. Gregory VII. and an Innocent III. were to carry to its extreme consequences. This was the germ, destined to unfold itself slowly underground, until it should rise and develop its branches in the feudal times, serving as a stay and prop for an anarchical state of society. But let us not wander beyond our subject. Gratian and Ambrose were soon closely knit together in the greatest intimacy, and ere long the influence of the master mind became apparent. Between 378 and 381 Gratian dwelt almost constantly at Milan, issuing new laws, which all bear the stamp of a priestly impulse, which all are inspired by a man who could not forget that he likewise had held civil power. In everyone of these enactments, justly observes our author, we perceive certain dispositions tempering rigor by clemency. Thus it is, for instance, with those privileged corporations of the Roman empire, which were at once a resource and a source of ruin for its very existence by their extortionary tendencies; thus, again, with a more equitable distribution of the annona, which is modified according to the dictates of charity. Elsewhere measures are adopted against burglary or brigandage, but at the same time qualified by certain humane clauses, as to the mode of repression. In fact, the civil ruler shows himself less authoritative, less imperious, less harsh and arbitrary in the display of his power; and yet we meet with a greater firmness, never baulked by alternatives of weakness and helplessness.
In other directions these laws assume the form of what we might call public manifestations of the imperial conscience. Let us supply a few instructive instances.
Milan, August 3, 379.—General law against heretics, expressly modifying the edict enacted at Sirmium in the preceding year, and extending to such sects as shall debase by their sophistry the notion of God, the prohibition of propagandism, which had already been laid upon those who annulled baptism by renewing it, (Donatist.)
Milan, April 24, 380.—Women of low extraction, and condemned by that very fact to appear on the stage are freed from any such obligation as soon as they embrace Christianity; "because," says the law, "the better mode of living they have adopted liberated them from the bond of their natural condition: Melior vivendi usus vinculo naturalis conditionis evaluit."
May, 381.—The above law is restricted; "for such women as abandon the purity of a Christian life shall not enjoy the above exemption."
July 21st.—Liberation of certain criminals, in honor of Easter.
May 2, 382.—Penal measures are denounced against those apostates who shall preach apostasy. Whoever abandons the Christian law to embrace idolatry, Judaism, or Manichaeism, is declared incapable of making a will, one of the greatest penalties to which a Roman could be subjected. And all these measures were crowned by another, which made a deep impression throughout the whole empire: the statue of Victory was definitively removed from the hall where the senate assembled at Rome for its deliberations. This was perhaps the greatest proof of the influence which Ambrose had over the imperial mind, and not one heathen, of high or low degree, mistook the hand that had dealt the blow.
At any rate, Ambrose was not the man to deny it. Symmachus, one of the most illustrious patricians, who belonged to the heathen party, having sent up to the throne a petition, whose object was to obtain the restoration of the statue, Ambrose himself entered the lists in a counter petition, or rather manifesto, in which we see at once the bishop and the statesman.
"Every man [says he] who acknowledges the Roman rule bears arms for the emperors and princes; you are verily the militia of an all-powerful God, and of the most holy faith. For there is no security for man himself if he does not worship the true God—the God of the Christians, who governs all things; he alone is the true God, and demands that we should adore him from the bottom of our souls. The gods of nations, say the Scriptures, are nothing else but devils.