Before dismissing this very important revolution in moral history, I may add two remarks. In the first place, we may observe that the relation of the two great schools of morals to active and political life has been completely changed. Among the ancients, the Stoics, who regarded virtue and vice as generically different from all other things, participated actively in public life, and made this participation one of the first of duties; while the Epicureans, who resolved virtue into utility, and esteemed happiness its supreme motive, abstained from public life, and taught their disciples to neglect it. Asceticism followed the Stoical school in teaching that virtue and happiness are generically different things; but it was at the same time eminently unfavourable to civic virtue. On the other hand, that great industrial movement which has arisen since the abolition of slavery, and which has always been essentially utilitarian in its spirit, has been one of the most active and influential elements of political progress. This change, though, as far as I know, entirely unnoticed by historians, constitutes, I believe, one of the great landmarks of moral history.
The second observation I would make relates to the estimate we form of the value of patriotic actions. However [pg 147] much historians may desire to extend their researches to the private and domestic virtues of a people, civic virtues are always those which must appear most prominently in their pages. History is concerned only with large bodies of men. The systems of philosophy or religion which produce splendid results on the great theatre of public life are fully and easily appreciated, and readers and writers are both liable to give them very undue advantages over those systems which do not favour civic virtues, but exercise their beneficial influence in the more obscure fields of individual self-culture, domestic morals, or private charity. If valued by the self-sacrifice they imply, or by their effects upon human happiness, these last rank very high, but they scarcely appear in history, and they therefore seldom obtain their due weight in historical comparisons. Christianity has, I think, suffered peculiarly from this cause. Its moral action has always been much more powerful upon individuals than upon societies, and the spheres in which its superiority over other religions is most incontestable, are precisely those which history is least capable of realising.
In attempting to estimate the moral condition of the Roman and Byzantine Empires during the Christian period, and before the old civilisation had been dissolved by the barbarian or Mohammedan invasions, we must continually bear this last consideration in mind. We must remember, too, that Christianity had acquired an ascendancy among nations which were already deeply tainted by the inveterate vices of a corrupt and decaying civilisation, and also that many of the censors from whose pages we are obliged to form our estimate of the age were men who judged human frailties with all the fastidiousness of ascetics, and who expressed their judgments with all the declamatory exaggeration of the pulpit. Modern critics will probably not lay much stress upon the relapse of the Christians into the ordinary dress and usages of the luxurious society about them, upon [pg 148] the ridicule thrown by Christians on those who still adhered to the primitive austerity of the sect, or upon the fact that multitudes who were once mere nominal Pagans had become mere nominal Christians. We find, too, a frequent disposition on the part of moralists to single out some new form of luxury, or some trivial custom which they regarded as indecorous, for the most extravagant denunciation, and to magnify its importance in a manner which in a later age it is difficult even to understand. Examples of this kind may be found both in Pagan and in Christian writings, and they form an extremely curious page in the history of morals. Thus Juvenal exhausts his vocabulary of invective in denouncing the atrocious criminality of a certain noble, who in the very year of his consulship did not hesitate—not, it is true, by day, but at least in the sight of the moon and of the stars—with his own hand to drive his own chariot along the public road.[320] Seneca was scarcely less scandalised by the atrocious and, as he thought, unnatural luxury of those who had adopted the custom of cooling different beverages by mixing them with snow.[321] Pliny assures us that the most monstrous of all criminals was the man who first devised the luxurious custom of wearing golden rings.[322] Apuleius was compelled to defend himself for having eulogised tooth-powder, and he did so, among other ways, by arguing that nature has justified this form of propriety, for crocodiles were known periodically to leave the waters of the Nile, and to lie with open jaws [pg 149] upon the banks, while a certain bird proceeds with its beak to clean their teeth.[323] If we were to measure the criminality of different customs by the vehemence of the patristic denunciations, we might almost conclude that the most atrocious offence of their day was the custom of wearing false hair, or dyeing natural hair. Clement of Alexandria questioned whether the validity of certain ecclesiastical ceremonies might not be affected by wigs; for, he asked, when the priest is placing his hand on the head of the person who kneels before him, if that hand is resting upon false hair, who is it he is really blessing? Tertullian shuddered at the thought that Christians might have the hair of those who were in hell upon their heads, and he found in the tiers of false hair that were in use a distinct rebellion against the assertion that no one can add to his stature, and, in the custom of dyeing the hair, a contravention of the declaration that man cannot make one hair white or black. Centuries rolled away. The Roman Empire tottered to its fall, and floods of vice and sorrow overspread the world; but still the denunciations of the Fathers were unabated. St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory Nazianzen continued with uncompromising vehemence the war against false hair, which Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria had begun.[324]
But although the vehemence of the Fathers on such trivial matters might appear at first sight to imply the existence of a society in which grave corruption was rare, such a conclusion would be totally untrue. After every legitimate allowance has been made, the pictures of Roman society by Ammianus Marcellinus, of the society of Marseilles, by Salvian, of the society of Asia Minor, and of Constantinople, by Chrysostom, as well as the whole tenor of the history, and [pg 150] innumerable incidental notices in the writers, of the time, exhibit a condition of depravity, and especially of degradation, which has seldom been surpassed.[325] The corruption had reached classes and institutions that appeared the most holy. The Agapæ, or love feasts, which formed one of the most touching symbols of Christian unity, had become scenes of drunkenness and of riot. Denounced by the Fathers, condemned by the Council of Laodicea in the fourth century, and afterwards by the Council of Carthage, they lingered as a scandal and an offence till they were finally suppressed by the Council of Trullo, at the end of the seventh century.[326] The commemoration of the martyrs soon degenerated into scandalous dissipation. Fairs were held on the occasion, gross breaches of chastity were frequent, and the annual festival was suppressed on account of the immorality it produced.[327] The ambiguous position of the clergy with reference to marriage already led to grave disorder. In the time of St. Cyprian, before the outbreak of the Decian persecution, it had been common to find clergy professing celibacy, but keeping, under various pretexts, their mistresses in their houses;[328] and, after Constantine, the complaints on this subject became loud and general.[329] Virgins and monks often lived together in the same house, professing sometimes to share in [pg 151] chastity the same bed.[330] Rich widows were surrounded by swarms of clerical sycophants, who addressed them in tender diminutives, studied and consulted their every foible, and, under the guise of piety, lay in wait for their gifts or bequests.[331] The evil attained such a point that a law was made under Valentinian depriving the Christian priests and monks of that power of receiving legacies which was possessed by every other class of the community; and St. Jerome has mournfully acknowledged that the prohibition was necessary.[332] Great multitudes entered the Church to avoid municipal offices;[333] the deserts were crowded with men whose sole object was to escape from honest labour, and even soldiers used to desert their colours for the monasteries.[334] [pg 152] Noble ladies, pretending a desire to lead a higher life, abandoned their husbands to live with low-born lovers.[335] Palestine, which was soon crowded with pilgrims, had become, in the time of St. Gregory of Nyssa, a hotbed of debauchery.[336] The evil reputation of pilgrimages long continued; and in the eighth century we find St. Boniface writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, imploring the bishops to take some measures to restrain or regulate the pilgrimages of their fellow-countrywomen; for there were few towns in central Europe, on the way to Rome, where English ladies, who started as pilgrims, were not living in open prostitution.[337] The luxury and ambition of the higher prelates, and the passion for amusements of the inferior priests,[338] were bitterly acknowledged. St. Jerome complained that the banquets of many bishops eclipsed in splendour those of the provincial governors, and the intrigues by which they obtained offices, and the fierce partisanship of their supporters, appear in every page of ecclesiastical history.
In the lay world, perhaps the chief characteristic was extreme childishness. The moral enthusiasm was greater than it had been in most periods of Paganism, but, being drawn away to the desert, it had little influence upon society. The [pg 153] simple fact that the quarrels between the factions of the chariot races for a long period eclipsed all political, intellectual, and even religious differences, filled the streets again and again with bloodshed, and more than once determined great revolutions in the State, is sufficient to show the extent of the decadence. Patriotism and courage had almost disappeared, and, notwithstanding the rise of a Belisarius or a Narses, the level of public men was extremely depressed. The luxury of the court, the servility of the courtiers, and the prevailing splendour of dress and of ornament, had attained an extravagant height. The world grew accustomed to a dangerous alternation of extreme asceticism and gross vice, and sometimes, as in the case of Antioch,[339] the most vicious and luxurious cities produced the most numerous anchorites. There existed a combination of vice and superstition which is eminently prejudicial to the nobility, though not equally detrimental to the happiness, of man. Public opinion was so low, that very many forms of vice attracted little condemnation and punishment, while undoubted belief in the absolving efficacy of superstitious rites calmed the imagination and allayed the terrors of conscience. There was more falsehood and treachery than under the Cæsars, but there was much less cruelty, violence, and shamelessness. There was also less public spirit, less independence of character, less intellectual freedom.
In some respects, however, Christianity had already effected a great improvement. The gladiatorial games had disappeared from the West, and had not been introduced into Constantinople. The vast schools of prostitution which had grown up under the name of temples of Venus were suppressed. Religion, however deformed and debased, was at least no longer a seedplot of depravity, and under the influence of Christianity the effrontery of vice had in a great [pg 154] measure disappeared. The gross and extravagant indecency of representation, of which we have still examples in the paintings on the walls, and the signs on many of the portals of Pompeii; the banquets of rich patricians, served by naked girls; the hideous excesses of unnatural lust, in which some of the Pagan emperors had indulged with so much publicity, were no longer tolerated. Although sensuality was very general, it was less obtrusive, and unnatural and eccentric forms had become rare. The presence of a great Church, which, amid much superstition and fanaticism, still taught a pure morality, and enforced it by the strongest motives, was everywhere felt—controlling, strengthening, or overawing. The ecclesiastics were a great body in the State. The cause of virtue was strongly organised; it drew to itself the best men, determined the course of vacillating but amiable natures, and placed some restraint upon the vicious. A bad man might be insensible to the moral beauties of religion, but he was still haunted by the recollection of its threatenings. If he emancipated himself from its influence in health and prosperity, its power returned in periods of sickness or danger, or on the eve of the commission of some great crime. If he had nerved himself against all its terrors, he was at least checked and governed at every turn by the public opinion which it had created. That total absence of all restraint, all decency, and all fear and remorse, which had been evinced by some of the monsters of crime who occupied the Pagan throne, and which proves most strikingly the decay of the Pagan religion, was no longer possible. The virtue of the best Pagans was perhaps of as high an order as that of the best Christians, though it was of a somewhat different type, but the vice of the worst Pagans certainly far exceeded that of the worst Christians. The pulpit had become a powerful centre of attraction, and charities of many kinds were actively developed.
The moral effects of the first great outburst of asceticism, [pg 155] so far as we have yet traced them, appear almost unmingled evils. In addition to the essentially distorted ideal of perfection it produced, the simple withdrawal from active life of that moral enthusiasm, which is the leaven of society, was extremely pernicious, and there can be little doubt that to this cause we must in a great degree attribute the conspicuous failure of the Church, for some centuries, to effect any more considerable amelioration in the moral condition of Europe. There were, however, some distinctive excellences springing even from the first phase of asceticism, which, although they do not, as I conceive, suffice to counterbalance these evils, may justly qualify our censure.
The first condition of all really great moral excellence is a spirit of genuine self-sacrifice and self-renunciation. The habits of compromise, moderation, reciprocal self-restraint, gentleness, courtesy, and refinement, which are appropriate to luxurious or utilitarian civilisations, are very favourable to the development of many secondary virtues; but there is in human nature a capacity for a higher and more heroic reach of excellence, which demands very different spheres for its display, accustoms men to far nobler aims, and exercises a far greater attractive influence upon mankind. Imperfect and distorted as was the ideal of the anchorite; deeply, too, as it was perverted by the admixture of a spiritual selfishness, still the example of many thousands, who, in obedience to what they believed to be right, voluntarily gave up everything that men hold dear, cast to the winds every compromise with enjoyment, and made extreme self-abnegation the very principle of their lives, was not wholly lost upon the world. At a time when increasing riches had profoundly tainted the Church, they taught men “to love labour more than rest, and ignominy more than glory, and to give more than to receive.”[340] At a time when the passion for ecclesiastical [pg 156] dignities had become the scandal of the Empire, they systematically abstained from them, teaching, in their quaint but energetic language, that “there are two classes a monk should especially avoid—bishops and women.”[341] The very eccentricities of their lives, their uncouth forms, their horrible penances, won the admiration of rude men, and the superstitious reverence thus excited gradually passed to the charity and the self-denial which formed the higher elements of the monastic character. Multitudes of barbarians were converted to Christianity at the sight of St. Simeon Stylites. The hermit, too, was speedily idealised by the popular imagination. The more repulsive features of his life and appearance were forgotten. He was thought of only as an old man with long white beard and gentle aspect, weaving his mats beneath the palm-trees, while dæmons vainly tried to distract him by their stratagems, and the wild beasts grew tame in his presence, and every disease and every sorrow vanished at his word. The imagination of Christendom, fascinated by this ideal, made it the centre of countless legends, usually very childish, and occasionally, as we have seen, worse than childish, yet full of beautiful touches of human nature, and often conveying admirable moral lessons.[342] Nursery tales, which first determine the course of the infant imagination, play no inconsiderable part in the history of humanity. In the fable of Psyche—that [pg 157] bright tale of passionate love with which the Greek mother lulled her child to rest—Pagan antiquity has bequeathed us a single specimen of transcendent beauty, and the lives of the saints of the desert often exhibit an imagination different indeed in kind, but scarcely less brilliant in its display. St. Antony, we are told, was thinking one night that he was the best man in the desert, when it was revealed to him that there was another hermit far holier than himself. In the morning he started across the desert to visit this unknown saint. He met first of all a centaur, and afterwards a little man with horns and goat's feet, who said that he was a faun; and these, having pointed out the way, he arrived at last at his destination. St. Paul the hermit, at whose cell he stopped, was one hundred and thirteen years old, and, having been living for a very long period in absolute solitude, he at first refused to admit the visitor, but at last consented, embraced him, and began, with a very pardonable curiosity, to question him minutely about the world he had left; “whether there was much new building in the towns, what empire ruled the world, whether there were any idolaters remaining?” The colloquy was interrupted by a crow, which came with a loaf of bread, and St. Paul, observing that during the last sixty years his daily allowance had been only half a loaf, declared that this was a proof that he had done right in admitting Antony. The hermits returned thanks, and sat down together by the margin of a glassy stream. But now a difficulty arose. Neither could bring himself to break the loaf before the other. St. Paul alleged that St. Antony, being his guest, should take the precedence; but St. Antony, who was only ninety years old, dwelt upon the greater age of St. Paul. So scrupulously polite were these old men, that they passed the entire afternoon disputing on this weighty question, till at last, when the evening was drawing in, a happy thought struck them, and, each holding one end of the loaf, they pulled together. To abridge the story, St. Paul soon [pg 158] died, and his companion, being a weak old man, was unable to bury him, when two lions came from the desert and dug the grave with their paws, deposited the body in it, raised a loud howl of lamentation, and then knelt down submissively before St. Antony, to beg a blessing. The authority for this history is no less a person than St. Jerome, who relates it as literally true, and intersperses his narrative with severe reflections on all who might question his accuracy.
The historian Palladius assures us that he heard from the lips of St. Macarius of Alexandria an account of a pilgrimage which that saint had made, under the impulse of curiosity, to visit the enchanted garden of Jannes and Jambres, tenanted by dæmons. For nine days Macarius traversed the desert, directing his course by the stars, and, from time to time, fixing reeds in the ground, as landmarks for his return; but this precaution proved useless, for the devils tore up the reeds, and placed them during the night by the head of the sleeping saint. As he drew near the garden, seventy dæmons of various forms came forth to meet him, and reproached him for disturbing them in their home. St. Macarius promised simply to walk round and inspect the wonders of the garden, and then depart without doing it any injury. He fulfilled his promise, and a journey of twenty days brought him again to his cell.[343] Other legends are, however, of a less fantastic nature; and many of them display, though sometimes in very whimsical forms, a spirit of courtesy which seems to foreshadow the later chivalry, and some of them contain striking protests against the very superstitions that were most prevalent. When St. Macarius was sick, a bunch of grapes was once given to him; but his charity impelled him to give them to another hermit, who in his turn refused to keep them, and at last, having made the circuit of the entire desert, they were returned to the saint.[344] [pg 159] The same saint, whose usual beverage was putrid water, never failed to drink wine when set before him by the hermits he visited, atoning privately for this relaxation, which he thought the laws of courtesy required, by abstaining from water for as many days as he had drunk glasses of wine.[345] One of his disciples once meeting an idolatrous priest running in great haste across the desert, with a great stick in his hand, cried out in a loud voice, “Where are you going, dæmon?” The priest, naturally indignant, beat the Christian severely, and was proceeding on his way, when he met St. Macarius, who accosted him so courteously and so tenderly that the Pagan's heart was touched, he became a convert, and his first act of charity was to tend the Christian whom he had beaten.[346] St. Avitus being on a visit to St. Marcian, this latter saint placed before him some bread, which Avitus refused to eat, saying that it was his custom never to touch food till after sunset. St. Marcian, professing his own inability to defer his repast, implored his guest for once to break this custom, and being refused, exclaimed, “Alas! I am filled with anguish that you have come here to see a wise man and a saint, and you see only a glutton.” St. Avitus was grieved, and said, “he would rather even eat flesh than hear such words,” and he sat down as desired. St. Marcian then confessed that his own custom was the same as that of his brother saint; “but,” he added, “we know that charity is better than fasting; for charity is enjoined by the Divine law, but fasting is left in our own power and will.”[347] St. Epiphanius having invited St. Hilarius to his cell, placed before him a dish of fowl. “Pardon me, father,” said St. Hilarius, “but since I have become a monk I have never eaten flesh.” “And I,” said St. Epiphanius, “since I have become a monk have never suffered [pg 160] the sun to go down upon my wrath.” “Your rule,” rejoined the other, “is more excellent than mine.”[348] While a rich lady was courteously fulfilling the duties of hospitality to a monk, her child, whom she had for this purpose left, fell into a well. It lay unharmed upon the surface of the water, and afterwards told its mother that it had seen the arms of the saint sustaining it below.[349] At a time when it was the custom to look upon the marriage state with profound contempt, it was revealed to St. Macarius of Egypt that two married women in a neighbouring city were more holy than he was. The saint immediately visited them, and asked their mode of life, but they utterly repudiated the notion of their sanctity. “Holy father,” they said, “suffer us to tell you frankly the truth. Even this very night we did not shrink from sleeping with our husbands, and what good works, then, can you expect from us?” The saint, however, persisted in his inquiries, and they then told him their stories. “We are,” they said, “in no way related, but we married two brothers. We have lived together for fifteen years, without one licentious or angry word. We have entreated our husbands to let us leave them, to join the societies of holy virgins, but they refused to permit us, and we then promised before Heaven that no worldly word should sully our lips.” “Of a truth,” cried St. Macarius, “I see that God regards not whether one is virgin or married, whether one is in a monastery or in the world. He considers only the disposition of the heart, and gives the Spirit to all who desire to serve Him, whatever their condition may be.”[350]
I have multiplied these illustrations to an extent that must, I fear, have already somewhat taxed the patience of my readers; but the fact that, during a long period of history, these saintly legends formed the ideals guiding the imagination [pg 161] and reflecting the moral sentiment of the Christian world, gives them an importance far beyond their intrinsic value. Before dismissing the saints of the desert, there is one other class of legends to which I desire to advert. I mean those which describe the connection between saints and the animal world. These legends are, I think, worthy of special notice in moral history, as representing the first, and at the same time one of the most striking efforts ever made in Christendom to inculcate a feeling of kindness and pity towards the brute creation. In Pagan antiquity, considerable steps had been made to raise this form of humanity to a recognised branch of ethics. The way had been prepared by numerous anecdotes growing for the most part out of simple ignorance of natural history, which all tended to diminish the chasm between men and animals, by representing the latter as possessing to a very high degree both moral and rational qualities. Elephants, it was believed, were endowed not only with reason and benevolence, but also with reverential feelings. They worshipped the sun and moon, and in the forests of Mauritania they were accustomed to assemble every new moon, at a certain river, to perform religious rites.[351] The hippopotamus taught men the medicinal value of bleeding, being accustomed, when affected by plethory, to bleed itself with a thorn, and afterwards close the wound with slime.[352] Pelicans committed suicide to feed their young; and bees, when they had broken the laws of their sovereign.[353] A temple was erected at Sestos to commemorate the affection of an eagle which loved a young girl, and upon her death cast itself in despair into the flames by which her body was consumed.[354] Numerous anecdotes are related of [pg 162] faithful dogs which refused to survive their masters, and one of these had, it was said, been transformed into the dog-star.[355] The dolphin, especially, became the subject of many beautiful legends, and its affection for its young, for music, and above all for little children, excited the admiration not only of the populace, but of the most distinguished naturalists.[356] Many philosophers ascribed to animals a rational soul, like that of man. According to the Pythagoreans, human souls transmigrate after death into animals. According to the Stoics and others, the souls of men and animals were alike parts of the all-pervading Divine Spirit that animates the world.[357]