of sins, answered Augustine and Orosius. There was reason in both replies. No doubt, the flame of Christian enthusiasm both rose and fell; it had its seasons of declension and revival. But the Empire effected, itself was the beginning of the end of Roman civilization, which was properly founded on the virtues of the Republic. It was impotent of permanent revivification. Under Theodosius, Justinian, and even Heraclius, it showed an appearance of concentration and force which had no true basis of reality. It offered no new conditions of social and political development; no enduring institutions of liberty or usefulness. The Municipal system, What it with its rules of freedom; the Imperial ideas of majesty, order, and subordination, were, indeed, legacies to an after-time. But it was the Church of Christ which entered on and took up the inheritance. Meanwhile the leaven of Christian doctrines was working after its proper kind. From the individual outwards to the race, through single personal influences, the restoration of human nature was progressing. Following, we may well believe, a Divine guidance as the enforcement of a Divine both in morals and in other respects, Paganism had reacted on Christianity. Compare Schmidt, Essai, III. c. vi. The conditions of its wellbeing thus vitiated, it was only by the infusion of a healthier stock in the rude virtues of the Teutonic tribes that it was enabled to put out its native force. It is interesting to observe that Africa, destined to lose for so long the light of Christianity, is described by Salvian as the foulest of all the Roman provinces (VII., xiii.-xv.). Its vices, he says, had bred a second nature in its inhabitants. and why it Law, and as a moral power among men, it made to survived. itself a spiritual, not a temporal, kingdom, and thus the nucleus regenera tion; survived the collision of the Empire with Barbarism. 2 Though powerless to avert the shock, it had in a It became manner prepared for its arrival. In the free instiof social tutions of the Church, based on the spiritual liberty of man, there existed a nucleus of social regeneration, destined to work out, on favourable soil, a new civilization. Its Councils and Synods, provincial, national, and general, offered a standing example of free assemblies, so congenial to the Teutonic temper. Its election of Bishops and clergy, as later of Abbots and Popes, recognized, at first substantially, the claims of merit. Indeed, the Church has always recruited herself from all ranks, and thus avoided the stagnation incident to hereditary castes.3 Coming forward as a source of new ideas, Christianity had, at the outset, no fear of progress, intellect, or Science. It re-invigorated Art by endowing it with new motives; it encouraged industry; it worked with the influences which were of new ideas, 1 See Guizot, Civ. en Fr., I. 339, E. T. Writers on this period of history will perhaps always remain divided as to the proportion of effect due to Roman civilization, to German independence, and to Christian influence. The fact of the latter agency is all that is here maintained. 2 Guizot, u. 8., I. 331. Gieseler, I. 418. The Bishop was chosen ἐπισκόπων συνόδῳ ψηφῷ κληρικῶν, αἰτήσει λαῶν. The person elected by the clergy was accepted by the people crying out "A&ios, bene meritus; or áváţios.—See Bingham, IV. ii. 4, 5, and XVII. v. 3, with the authorities. 3 Guizot, Civ. en Eur., I. 93. Comp. Ozanam, Civil. Chrétienne au Vme Siècle, I. c. i. See also M. Littré, Les Barbares et le Moyen-Age. Introduction. to the con the bar changing slavery into serfdom, and serfdom into free tenures; and welcomed, in the new races which overran the Empire, the virtues of a rude but uncorrupted Barbarism.' Thus it furnished its con- necessary querors with the elements requisite to their social version of development. In the collapse of the Empire, barians. Christianity was left single-handed to contend with the intrusion of new forces, and to undertake the work of reconstruction. On through the Middle Ages (properly so called) intervening between the decay of ancient civilization and the revival of a new and modern culture under the influences of classical philosophy and literature, Christianity, as an intellectual as well as a moral power, wrought alone. The progress made in physical discoveries; Vast conin art, however rudimentary, culminating, notwith- due to standing, in the sublimest ideals; in language and influence mental discussion; 3 was the fruit of Christian influ- times. 1 Compare Salvian, u. s., IV. xiii., VII. vi. "Inter pudicos barbaros impudici sumus: plus adhuc dico; offenduntur barbari ipsi impuritatibus nostris." He excepts among Christians from his rebuke the religiosi. 2 "All the civil elements of modern society were either in decay or infancy. The Church alone was at the same time young and constituted: it alone had acquired a definite form, and preserved all the vigour of early age: it alone possessed at once movement and order, energy, and regularity; that is to say, the two great means of influence."-Guizot, Civ. en Eur., I. 85. Christianity, it must be remembered, preceded the political re-organization consequent on the fall of the Empire, and may therefore be regarded as the more powerful and necessary element. 3 See M. Guizot's most interesting comparison of the civil and the Christian literature in the fourth and fifth centuries. Civ. en Fr., Vol. I. Lec. IV. "Intellectual development," he most truly observes, "the labour of mind to obtain truth, will stop unless placed in the train and sequences Christian in these the present ence on the rough material of the Barbaric stock. In this period were sown the germs of all future social advance. The ubiquity and variety of Christian influence in the period we are rapidly reviewing, from the fifth to the fourteenth centuries, are everywhere apparent. It will be sufficient (and in this Lecture only in part practicable) to mark some Method of instances of it; to briefly assign to other sources of inquiry. influence their due share in the work of European civilization; and lastly, to notice some results and circumstances which have been alleged to make against Christianity as a successful operative element at this period in the advance of mankind. §8. "Never," says M. Guizot, "has any other tianity society made such efforts to influence the surroundfifth to the ing world, and to stamp thereon its own likeness tury. as were made by the Christian Church between the fifth and tenth centuries." It was not, be it re Efforts of from the tenth cen beneath the shield of some one of the actual, immediate, powerful interests of humanity. . . . The Christian religion furnished them with the means by uniting with it philosophy and literature escaped the ruin which menaced them." Thus the spiritual vigour of Christianity worked by means of education, and enlisted in its cause the highest minds of the time. 1 M. Sismondi, Hist. d. Franc., II. 50: "Lors de l'établissement du Christianisme la religion avait essentiellement consisté dans l'enseignement moral: elle avait excercé les cœurs et les âmes par la recherche de ce qui était vraiment beau, vraiment honnête. Au cinquième siècle on l'avait surtout attachée à l'orthodoxie, au septième on l'avait réduite à la bienfaisance envers les couvents." This summary does not allow sufficiently for the missionary labours of this period. "The triumph," says Dean Merivale, " of the Church over her Northern conquerors was the greatest, I suppose, of all her triumphs, the issue least to be expected beforehand, most to be admired in the retrospect, of any." means of membered, till after the invasion of the Barbarians that a career was opened to the Church of influencing civil society. All institutions hitherto had been laid in Paganism. The government and administration represented only the Imperial system. Slowly, as the Empire fell back in every direction on Rome and Constantinople, these gave way. The mass of the provincial population Its new entered the Christian society. New interests and influence, new influence opened before the Bishops and clergy. Literature, education, the exercise of the learned professions, fell into Christian hands. As a moral instrument to govern the lives of men, endowed with an organization fitted by its fixedness yet pliancy for wide-reaching and varied application, Christianity at the period of the invasion of the Barbarians stood forth in all its power, ready for the work which lay before it. By a natural transition the Bishops resident in the cities and centres of population, the last protectors of all that remained of Roman society and Roman civilization, political became the counsellors of the invading leaders; the equals of counts and nobles; enjoining humanity towards the vanquished, acting as mediators in 1 The clergy were taken chiefly from the subjugated people who thus acquired a powerful influence over their conquerors. See Canon Robertson (C. H., I. 555). They became the "defensores civitatis," or standing advocates of the rights of the provincials. On the effect of the system of Christianity within the Empire on the Germans, see Merivale (Lectt., p. 102): "Rome abandoned by her Cæsars and her legions was left to the counsel and protection of her Bishop and his priest," &c. and social. |