§ 13. The New Position of the Church in the Empire.

The previous chapter has shown us how Christianity gradually supplanted the Graeco-Roman heathenism and became the established religion in the empire of the Caesars. Since that time the church and the state, though frequently jarring, have remained united in Europe, either on the hierarchical basis, with the temporal power under the tutelage of the spiritual, or on the caesaro-papal, with the spiritual power merged in the temporal; while in the United States of America, since the end of the eighteenth century, the two powers have stood peacefully but independently side by side. The church could now act upon the state; but so could the state act upon the church; and this mutual influence became a source of both profit and loss, blessing and curse, on either side.

The martyrs and confessors of the first three centuries, in their expectation of the impending end of the world and their desire for the speedy return of the Lord, had never once thought of such a thing as the great and sudden change, which meets us at the beginning of this period in the relation of the Roman state to the Christian church. Tertullian had even held the Christian profession to be irreconcilable with the office of a Roman emperor.

Apologeticus, c. 21 “Sed et Caesares credidissent, si aut Caesares non essent saeculo necessarii, aut si et Christiani potuissent esse Caesares.”

The change was as natural and inevitable as it was great. When Constantine planted the standard of the cross upon the forsaken temples of the gods, he but followed the irresistible current of history itself. Christianity had already, without a stroke of sword or of intrigue, achieved over the false religion the internal victory of spirit over matter, of truth over falsehood, of faith over superstition, of the worship of God over idolatry, of morality over corruption. Under a three hundred years’ oppression, it had preserved its irrepressible moral vigor, and abundantly earned its new social position. It could not possibly continue a despised sect, a homeless child of the wilderness, but, like its divine founder on the third day after his crucifixion, it must rise again, take the reins of the world into its hands, and, as an all-transforming principle, take state, science, and art to itself, to breathe into them a higher life and consecrate them to the service of God. The church, of course, continues to the end a servant, as Christ himself came not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and she must at all times suffer persecution, outwardly or inwardly, from the ungodly world. Yet is she also the bride of the Son of God, therefore of royal blood; and she is to make her purifying and sanctifying influence felt upon all orders of natural life and all forms of human society. And from this influence the state, of course, is not excepted. Union with the state is no more necessarily a profanation of holy things than union with science and art, which, in fact, themselves proceed from God, and must subserve his glory.

On the other hand, the state, as a necessary and divine institution for the protection of person and property, for the administration of law and justice, and for the promotion of earthly weal, could not possibly persist forever in her hostility to Christianity, but must at least allow it a legal existence and free play; and if she would attain a higher development and better answer her moral ends than she could in union with idolatry, she must surrender herself to its influence. The kingdom of the Father, to which the state belongs, is not essentially incompatible with the church, the kingdom of the Son; rather does “the Father draw to the Son,” and the Son leads back to the Father, till God become “all in all.” Henceforth should kings again be nursing fathers, and queens nursing mothers to the church,

Is. xlix. 23.

The American separation of church and state, even if regarded as the best settlement of the true relation of the two, is not in the least inconsistent with this view. It is not a return to the pre-Constantinian basis, with its spirit of persecution, but rests upon the mutual reverential recognition and support of the two powers, and must be regarded as the continued result of that mighty revolution of the fourth century.

But the elevation of Christianity as the religion of the state presents also an opposite aspect to our contemplation. It involved great risk of degeneracy to the church. The Roman state, with its laws, institutions, and usages, was still deeply rooted in heathenism, and could not be transformed by a magical stroke. The christianizing of the state amounted therefore in great measure to a paganizing and secularizing of the church. The world overcame the church, as much as the church overcame the world, and the temporal gain of Christianity was in many respects cancelled by spiritual loss. The mass of the Roman empire was baptized only with water, not with the Spirit and fire of the gospel, and it smuggled heathen manners and practices into the sanctuary under a new name. The very combination of the cross with the military ensign by Constantine was a most doubtful omen, portending an unhappy mixture of the temporal and the spiritual powers, the kingdom which is of the earth, and that which is from heaven. The settlement of the boundary between the two powers, which, with all their unity, remain as essentially distinct as body and soul, law and gospel, was itself a prolific source of errors and vehement strifes about jurisdiction, which stretch through all the middle age, and still repeat themselves in these latest times, save where the amicable American separation has thus far forestalled collision.

Amidst all the bad consequences of the union of church and state, however, we must not forget that the deeper spirit of the gospel has ever reacted against the evils and abuses of it, whether under an imperial pope or a papal emperor, and has preserved its divine power for the salvation of men under every form of constitution. Though standing and working in the world, and in many ways linked with it, yet is Christianity not of the world, but stands above it.

Nor must we think the degeneracy of the church began with her union with the state.

This view is now very prevalent in America. It was not formerly so. Jonathan Edwards, in his “History of Redemption,” a practical and edifying survey of church history as an unfolding of the plan of redemption, even saw in the accession of Constantine a type of the future appearing of Christ in the clouds for the redemption of his people, and attributed to it the most beneficent results; to wit: ”(1) The Christian church was thereby wholly delivered from persecution .... (2) God now appeared to execute terrible judgments on their enemies .... (3) Heathenism now was in a great measure abolished throughout the Roman empire .... (4) The Christian church was brought into a state of great peace and prosperity.” ... “This revolution,” he further says, p. 312, “was the greatest that had occurred since the flood. Satan, the prince of darkness, that king and god of the heathen world, was cast out. The roaring lion was conquered by the Lamb of God in the strongest dominion he ever had. This was a remarkable accomplishment of Jerem. x. 11: ’The gods that have not made the heaven and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth and from the heavens.’ ” This work, still much read in America and England, was written, to be sure, Iong before the separation of church and state in New England, viz., in 1739 (first printed in Edinburgh in 1774, twenty-six years after the author’s death). But the great difference of the judgment of this renowned Puritan divine from the prevailing American opinion of the present day is an interesting proof that our view of history is very much determined by the ecclesiastical circumstances in which we live, and at the same time that the whole question of church and state is not at all essential in Christian theology and ethics. In America all confessions, even the Roman Catholics, are satisfied with the separation, while in Europe with few exceptions it is the reverse.

§ 14. Rights and Privileges of the Church. Secular Advantages.

The conversion of Constantine and the gradual establishment of Christianity as the religion of the state had first of all the important effect of giving the church not only the usual rights of a legal corporation, which she possesses also in America, and here without distinction of confessions, but at the same time the peculiar privileges, which the heathen worship and priesthood had heretofore enjoyed. These rights and privileges she gradually secured either by tacit concession or through special laws of the Christian emperors as laid down in the collections of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes.

Comp. § 18.

The immunities and privileges, which were conferred upon the catholic church in the Roman empire from the time of Constantine by imperial legislation, may be specified as follows:

1. The exemption of the clergy from most public burdens.

Among these were obligatory public services,

The munera publica, or λειτουργίαι, attaching in part to the person as a subject of the empire, in part to the possession of property (munera patrimoniorum).

Constantine also exempted the church from the land tax, but afterwards revoked this immunity; and his successors likewise were not uniform in this matter. Ambrose, though one of the strongest advocates of the rights of the church, accedes to the fact and the justice of the assessment of church lands;

“Si tributum petit Imperator,” says he in the Orat. de basilicas non tradendis haereticis, “non negamus; agri ecclesiae solvunt tributum, solvimus quae sunt Caesaris Caesari, et qum sunt Dei Deo; tributum Caesaris est; non negatur.” Baronius (ad ann. 387) endeavors to prove that this tribute was meant by Ambrose merely as an act of love, not of duty!

2. The enrichment and endowment of the church.

Here again Constantine led the way. He not only restored (in 313) the buildings and estates, which had been confiscated in the Diocletian persecution, but granted the church also the right to receive legacies (321), and himself made liberal contributions in money and grain to the support of the clergy and the building of churches in Africa,

So early as 314 he caused to be paid to the bishop Caecilian of Carthage 3,000 folles (τρισχιλίους φόλεις£18,000) from the public treasury of the province for the catholic churches in Africa, Numidia, and Mauritania, promising further gifts for similar purposes. Euseb: H. E. x. 6, and Vit. Const. iv. 28.

The control of the ecclesiastical revenues vested in the bishops. The bishops distributed the funds according, to the prevailing custom into three or four parts: for themselves, for their clergy, for the current expenses of worship, and for the poor. They frequently exposed themselves to the suspicion of avarice and nepotism. The best of them, like Chrysostom and Augustine, were averse to this concernment with earthly property, since it often conflicted with their higher duties; and they preferred the poverty of earlier times, because the present abundant revenues diminished private beneficence.

And most certainly this opulence had two sides. It was a source both of profit and of loss to the church. According to the spirit of its proprietors and its controllers, it might be used for the furtherance of the kingdom of God, the building of churches, the support of the needy, and the founding of charitable institutions for the poor, the sick, for widows and orphans, for destitute strangers and aged persons,

The πτωχοτροφεῖα, νοσοκομεῖα, ὀρφανοτροφεῖα, γηροκομεῖα and ξενῶνες or ξενοδοχεῖα, as they were called; which all sprang from the church. Especially favored was the Basilias for sick and strangers in Caesarea, named after its founder, the bishop Basil the Great. Basil. Ep. 94. Gregor. Naz. Orat. 27 and 30.

§ 15. Support of the Clergy.

3. The better support of the clergy was another advantage connected with the new position of Christianity in the empire.

Hitherto the clergy had been entirely dependent on the voluntary contributions of the Christians, and the Christians were for the most part poor. Now they received a fixed income from the church funds and from imperial and municipal treasuries. To this was added the contribution of first-fruits and tithes, which, though not as yet legally enforced, arose as a voluntary custom at a very early period, and probably in churches of Jewish origin existed from the first, after the example of the Jewish law.

Lev. xxvii. 30-33; Nu. xviii. 20-24; Deut. xiv. 22 sqq. 2 Chron. xxxi. 4 sqq.

This improvement, also, in the external condition of the clergy was often attended with a proportional degeneracy in their moral character. It raised them above oppressive and distracting cares for livelihood, made them independent, and permitted them to devote their whole strength to the duties of their office; but it also favored ease and luxury, allured a host of unworthy persons into the service of the church, and checked the exercise of free giving among the people. The better bishops, like Athanasius, the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysosotom, Theodoret, Ambrose, Augustine, lived in ascetic simplicity, and used their revenues for the public good; while others indulged their vanity, their love of magnificence, and their voluptuousness. The heathen historian Ammianus gives the country clergy in general the credit of simplicity, temperance, and virtue, while he represents the Roman hierarchy, greatly enriched by the gifts of matrons, as extreme in the luxury of their dress and their more than royal banquets;

Lib. xxvii. c. 3.

It is worthy of notice, that, as we have already intimated, the two greatest church fathers gave the preference in principle to the voluntary system in the support of the church and the ministry, which prevailed before the Nicene era, and which has been restored in modern times in the United States of America. Chrysostom no doubt perceived that under existing circumstances the wants of the church could not well be otherwise supplied, but he was decidedly averse to the accumulation of treasure by the church, and said to his hearers in Antioch: “The treasure of the church should be with you all, and it is only your hardness of heart that requires her to hold earthly property and to deal in houses and lands. Ye are unfruitful in good works, and so the ministers of God must meddle in a thousand matters foreign to their office. In the days of the apostles people might likewise have given them houses and lands; why did they prefer to sell the houses and lands and give the proceeds? Because this was without doubt the better way. Your fathers would have preferred that you should give alms of your incomes, but they feared that your avarice might leave the poor to hunger; hence the present order of things.”

Homil. 85 in Matt. (vii. 808 sq.). Hom. 21 in 1 Cor. 7 (x. 190). Comp. also De sacerdot. l. iii. c. 16.

§ 16. Episcopal Jurisdiction and Intercession.

4. We proceed to the legal validity, of the episcopal jurisdiction, which likewise dates from the time of Constantine.

After the manner of the Jewish synagogues, and according to the exhortation of St. Paul,

1 Cor. vi. 1-6.

This elevation of the power and influence of the bishops was a salutary check upon the jurisdiction of the state, and on the whole conduced to the interests of justice and humanity; though it also nourished hierarchical arrogance and entangled the bishops, to the prejudice of their higher functions, in all manner of secular suits, in which they were frequently called into consultation. Chrysostom complains that “the arbitrator undergoes incalculable vexations, much labor, and more difficulties than the public judge. It is hard to discover the right, but harder not to violate it when discovered. Not labor and difficulty alone are connected with office, but also no little danger.”

De sacerd. l. iii. c. 18, at the beginning.

5. Another advantage resulting from the alliance of the church with the empire was the episcopal right of intercession.

The privilege of interceding with the secular power for criminals, prisoners, and unfortunates of every kind had belonged to the heathen priests, and especially to the vestals, and now passed to the Christian ministry, above all to the bishops, and thenceforth became an essential function of their office. A church in Gaul about the year 460 opposed the ordination of a monk to the bishopric, because, being unaccustomed to intercourse with secular magistrates, though he might intercede with the Heavenly Judge for their souls, he could not with the earthly for their bodies. The bishops were regarded particularly as the guardians of widows and orphans, and the control of their property was intrusted to them. Justinian in 529 assigned to them also a supervision of the prisons, which they were to visit on Wednesdays and Fridays, the days of Christ’s passion.

The exercise of this right of intercession, one may well suppose, often obstructed the course of justice; but it also, in innumerable cases, especially in times of cruel, arbitrary despotism, protected the interests of innocence, humanity, and mercy. Sometimes, by the powerful pleadings of bishops with governors and emperors, whole provinces were rescued from oppressive taxation and from the revenge of conquerors. Thus Flavian of Antioch in 387 averted the wrath of Theodosius on occasion of a rebellion, journeying under the double burden of age and sickness even to Constantinople to the emperor himself, and with complete success, as an ambassador of their common Lord, reminding him of the words: “If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

Matt. vi. 14.

6. With the right of intercession was closely connected the right of asylum in churches.

In former times many of the heathen temples and altars, with some exceptions, were held inviolable as places of refuge; and the Christian churches now inherited also this prerogative. The usage, with some precautions against abuse, was made law by Theodosius II. in 431, and the ill treatment of an unarmed fugitive in any part of the church edifice, or even upon the consecrated ground, was threatened with the penalty of death.

Cod. Theodos. ix. 45, 1-4. Comp. Socrat. vii. 33.

Thus slaves found sure refuge from the rage of their masters, debtors from the persecution of inexorable creditors, women and virgins from the approaches of profligates, the conquered from the sword of their enemies, in the holy places, until the bishop by his powerful mediation could procure justice or mercy. The beneficence of this law, which had its root not in superstition alone, but in the nobler sympathies of the people, comes most impressively to view amidst the ragings of the great migration and of the frequent intestine wars.

“The rash violence of despotism,” says even Gibbon, “was suspended by the mild interposition of the church; and the lives or fortunes of the most eminent subjects might be protected by the mediation of the bishop.”

§ 17. Legal Sanction of Sunday.

7. The civil sanction of the observance of Sunday and other festivals of the church.

The state, indeed, should not and cannot enforce this observance upon any one, but may undoubtedly and should prohibit the public disturbance and profanation of the Christian Sabbath, and protect the Christians in their right and duty of its proper observance. Constantine in 321 forbade the sitting of courts and all secular labor in towns on “the venerable day of the sun,” as he expresses himself, perhaps with reference at once to the sun-god, Apollo, and to Christ, the true Sun of righteousness; to his pagan and his Christian subjects. But he distinctly permitted the culture of farms and vineyards in the country, because frequently this could be attended to on no other day so well;

This exception is entirely unnoticed by many church histories, but stands in the same law of 321 in the Cod. Justin. lib. iii. tit. 12, de feriis, l. 3: “Omnes judices, urbanaeque plebes, et cunctarum artium officia venerabili die Solis quiescant. Ruri tamen positi agrorum culturae libere licenterque inserviant: quoniam frequenter evenit, ut non aptius alio die frumenta sulcis, aut vineae scrobibus mandentur, ne occasione momenti pereat commoditas coelesti provisione concessa.” Such work was formerly permitted, too, on the pagan feast days. Comp. Virgil. Georg. i. v. 268 sqq. Cato, De re rust. c. 2.

Nay, he went so far, in well-meaning but mistaken zeal, as to require of his soldiers, even the pagan ones, the positive observance of Sunday, by pronouncing at a signal the following prayer, which they mechanically learned: “Thee alone we acknowledge as God; thee we confess as king; to thee we call as our helper; from thee we have received victories; through thee we have conquered enemies. Thee we thank for good received; from thee we hope for good to come. Thee we all most humbly beseech to keep our Constantine and his God-fearing sons through long life healthy and victorious.”

Eus. Vit. Const. l. iv. c. 20. The formulary was prescribed in the Latin language, as Eusebius says in c. 19. He is speaking of the whole army (comp. c. 18), and it may presumed that many of the soldiers were heathen.

Later emperors declared the profanation of Sunday to be sacrilege, and prohibited also the collecting of taxes and private debts (368 and 386), and even theatrical and circus performances, on Sunday and the high festivals (386 and 425).

The second law against opening theatres on Sundays and festivals (a.d.425) in the Cod. Theodos. l. xv. tit. 7, I. 5, says expressly: “Omni theatrorum atque circensium voluptate per universas urbes ... denegata, totae Christianorum ac fidelium mentes Dei cultibus occupentur.”

§ 18. Influence of Christianity on Civil Legislation. The Justinian Code.

Comp. on this subject particularly the works cited at § 13, sub ii, by Rhoer, Meysenburg, and Troplong; also Gibbon, chap. xliv (an admirable summary of the Roman law), Milman: Lat. Christianity, vol. I. B. iii. chap. 5, and in part the works of Schmidt and Chastel on the influence of Christianity upon society in the Roman empire, quoted in vol. i. § 86.

While in this way the state secured to the church the well-deserved rights of a legal corporation, the church exerted in turn a most beneficent influence on the state, liberating it by degrees from the power of heathen laws and customs, from the spirit of egotism, revenge, and retaliation, and extending its care beyond mere material prosperity to the higher moral interests of society. In the previous period we observed the contrast between Christian morality and heathen corruption in the Roman empire.

Vol. i §§ 86-93.

As early as the second century, under the better heathen emperors, and evidently under the indirect, struggling, yet irresistible influence of the Christian spirit, legislation took a reformatory, humane turn, which was carried by the Christian emperors as far as it could be carried on the basis of the ancient Graeco-Roman civilization. Now, above all, the principle of justice and equity, humanity and love, began to assert itself in the state. For Christianity, with its doctrines of man’s likeness to God, of the infinite value of personality, of the original unity of the human race, and of the common redemption through Christ, first brought the universal rights of man to bear in opposition to the exclusive national spirit, the heartless selfishness, and the political absolutism of the old world, which harshly separated nations and classes, and respected man only as a citizen, while at the same time it denied the right of citizenship to the great mass of slaves, foreigners, and barbarians.

Comp. Lactantius: Inst. divin. l. v. c. 15.

Christ himself began his reformation with the lowest orders of the people, with fishermen and taxgatherers, with the poor, the lame, the blind, with demoniacs and sufferers of every kind, and raised them first to the sense of their dignity and their high destiny. So now the church wrought in the state and through the state for the elevation of the oppressed and the needy, and of those classes which under the reign of heathenism were not reckoned at all in the body politic, but were heartlessly trodden under foot. The reformatory motion was thwarted, it is true, to a considerable extent, by popular custom, which is stronger than law, and by the structure of society in the Roman empire, which was still essentially heathen and doomed to dissolution. But reform was at last set in motion, and could not be turned back even by the overthrow of the empire; it propagated itself among the German tribes. And although even in Christian states the old social maladies are ever breaking forth from corrupt human nature, sometimes with the violence of revolution, Christianity is ever coming in to restrain, to purify, to heal, and to console, curbing the wild passions of tyrants and of populace, vindicating the persecuted, mitigating the horrors of war, and repressing incalculable vice in public and in private life among Christian people. The most cursory comparison of Christendom with the most civilized heathen and Mohammedan countries affords ample testimony of this.

Here again the reign of Constantine is a turning point. Though an oriental despot, and but imperfectly possessed with the earnestness of Christian morality, he nevertheless enacted many laws, which distinctly breathe the spirit of Christian justice and humanity: the abolition of the punishment of crucifixion, the prohibition of gladiatorial games and cruel rites, the discouragement of infanticide, and the encouragement of the emancipation of slaves. Eusebius says he improved most of the old laws or replaced them by new ones.

Vit. Const. l. iv. c. 26, where the most important laws of Constantine are recapitulated. Even the heathen Libanius (Basil. ii. p. 146) records that under Constantine and his sons legislation was much more favorable to the lower classes: though he accounts for this only by the personal clemency of the emperors.

Even Julian, with all his hatred of the Christians, could not entirely renounce the influence of his education and of the reigning spirit of the age, but had to borrow from the church many of his measures for the reformation of heathenism. He recognized especially the duty of benevolence toward all men, charity to the poor, and clemency to prisoners; though this was contrary to the heathen sentiment, and though he proved himself anything but benevolent toward the Christians. But then the total failure of his philanthropic plans and measures shows that the true love for man can thrive only in Christian soil. And it is remarkable, that, with all this involuntary concession to Christianity, Julian himself passed not a single law in line with the progress of natural rights and equity.

Troplong, p. 127. C. Schmidt, 378.

His successors trod in the footsteps of Constantine, and to the end of the West Roman empire kept the civil legislation under the influence of the Christian spirit, though thus often occasioning conflicts with the still lingering heathen element, and sometimes temporary apostasy and reaction. We observe also, in remarkable contradiction, that while the laws were milder in some respects, they were in others even more severe and bloody than ever before: a paradox to be explained no doubt in part by the despotic character of the Byzantine government, and in part by the disorders of the time.

Comp. de Rhoer, p. 59 sqq. The origin of this increased severity of penal laws is, at all events, not to be sought in the church; for in the fourth and fifth centuries she was still rather averse to the death penalty. Comp. Ambros. Ep. 25 and 26 (al. 51 and 52), and Augustine, Ep. 153 ad Macedonium.

It now became necessary to collect the imperial ordinances

Constitutiones or Leges. If answers to questions, they were called Rescripta; if spontaneous decrees, Edicta.

This body of Roman law

Called Corpus juris Romanior C. juris civilis, in distinction from Corpus juris canonici, the Roman Catholic church law, which is based chiefly on the canons of the ancient councils, as the civil law is upon the rescripts and edicts of the emperors.

§ 19. Elevation of Woman and the Family.

The benign effect of Christianity on legislation in the Graeco-Roman empire is especially noticeable in the following points:

1. In the treatment of women. From the beginning, Christianity labored, primarily in the silent way of fact, for the elevation of the female sex from the degraded, slavish position, which it occupied in the heathen world;

On this subject, and on the heathen family life, comp. vol. i. § 91.

2. In the marriage laws, Constantine gave marriage its due freedom by abolishing the old Roman penalties against celibacy and childlessness.

C. Theod. viii. 16, 1. Comp. Euseb. Vit. Const. iv. 26.

Concubinage was forbidden from the time of Constantine, and adultery punished as one of the grossest crimes.

In a law of 326 it is called “facinus atrocissimum, scelus immane.” Cod. Theod. l. ix. tit. 7, 1. 1 sq. And the definition of adultery, too, was now made broader. According to the old Roman law, the idea of adultery on the part of the man was limited to illicit intercourse with the married lady of a free citizen, and was thought punishable not so much for its own sake, as for its encroachment on the rights of another husband. Hence Jerome says, l.c., of the heathen: “Apud illos viris impudicitiae frena laxantur, et solo stupro et adulterio condemnato passim per lupanaria et ancillulas libido permittitur; quasi culpam dignitas faciat, non voluntas. Apud nos quod non licet feminis, aeque non licet viris, et eadem servitus pari conditione censetur.” Yet the law, even under the emperors, still excepted carnal intercourse with a female slave from adultery. Thus the state here also stopped short of the church, and does to this day in countries where the institution of slavery exists.

3. The power of fathers over their children, which according to the old Roman law extended even to their freedom and life, had been restricted by Alexander Severus under the influence of the monarchical spirit, which is unfavorable to private jurisdiction, and was still further limited under Constantine. This emperor declared the killing of a child by its father, which the Pompeian law left unpunished, to be one of the greatest crimes.

a.d.318; Valentinian did the same in 374. Cod. Theod. ix. tit. 14 and 15. Comp. the Pandects, lib. xlviii. tit. 8, l ix.

§ 21. Abolition of Gladiatorial Shows.

6. And finally, one of the greatest and most beautiful victories of Christian humanity over heathen barbarism and cruelty was the abolition of gladiatorial contests, against which the apologists in the second century had already raised the most earnest protest.

Comp. vol. i. § 88.

These bloody shows, in which human beings, mostly criminals, prisoners of war, and barbarians, by hundreds and thousands killed one another or were killed in fight with wild beasts for the amusement of the spectators, were still in full favor at the beginning of the period before us. The pagan civilization here proves itself impotent. In its eyes the life of a barbarian is of no other use than to serve the cruel amusement of the Roman people, who wish quietly to behold with their own eyes and enjoy at home the martial bloodshedding of their frontiers. Even the humane Symmachus gave an exhibition of this kind during his consulate (391), and was enraged that twenty-nine Saxon prisoners of war escaped this public shame by suicide.

Symm. l. ii. Ep. 46. Comp. vii. 4.

The contagion of the thirst for blood, which these spectacles generated, is presented to us in a striking example by Augustine in his Confessions.

Lib. vi. c. 8.

Christianity finally succeeded in closing the amphitheatre. Constantine, who in his earlier reign himself did homage to the popular custom in this matter, and exposed a great multitude of conquered barbarians to death in the amphitheatre at Treves, for which he was highly commended by a heathen orator,

Eumenii Panegyr. c. 12.

§ 22. Evils of the Union of Church and State. Secularization of the Church.

We turn now to the dark side of the union of the church with the state; to the consideration of the disadvantages which grew out of their altered relation after the time of Constantine, and which continue to show themselves in the condition of the church in Europe to our own time.

These evil results may be summed up under the general designation of the secularization of the church. By taking in the whole population of the Roman empire the church became, indeed, a church of the masses, a church of the people, but at the same time more or less a church of the world. Christianity became a matter of fashion. The number of hypocrites and formal professors rapidly increased;

Thus Augustine, for example, Tract. in JoAnn. xxv. c. 10, laments that the church filled itself daily with those who sought Jesus not for Jesus, but for earthly profit. Comp. the similar complaint of Eusebius, Vita Const. l. iv. c. 54.

Yet the pure spirit of Christianity could by no means be polluted by this. On the contrary it retained even in the darkest days its faithful and steadfast confessors, conquered new provinces from time to time, constantly reacted, both within the established church and outside of it, in the form of monasticism, against the secular and the pagan influences, and, in its very struggle with the prevailing corruption, produced such church fathers as Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Augustine, such exemplary Christian mothers as Nonna, Anthusa, and Monica, and such extraordinary saints of the desert as Anthony, Pachomius, and Benedict. New enemies and dangers called forth new duties and virtues, which could now unfold themselves on a larger stage, and therefore also on a grander scale. Besides, it must not be forgotten, that the tendency to secularization is by no means to be ascribed only to Constantine and the influence of the state, but to the deeper source of the corrupt heart of man, and did reveal itself, in fact, though within a much narrower compass, long before, under the heathen emperors, especially in the intervals of repose, when the earnestness and zeal of Christian life slumbered and gave scope to a worldly spirit.

The difference between the age after Constantine and the age before consists, therefore, not at all in the cessation of true Christianity and the entrance of false, but in the preponderance of the one over the other. The field of the church was now much larger, but with much good soil it included far more that was stony, barren, and overgrown with weeds. The line between church and world, between regenerate and unregenerate, between those who were Christians in name and those who were Christians in heart, was more or less obliterated, and in place of the former hostility between the two parties there came a fusion of them in the same outward communion of baptism and confession. This brought the conflict between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, Christ and antichrist, into the bosom of Christendom itself.

§23. Worldliness and Extravagance.

The secularization of the church appeared most strikingly in the prevalence of mammon worship and luxury compared with the poverty and simplicity of the primitive Christians. The aristocracy of the later empire had a morbid passion for outward display and the sensual enjoyments of wealth, without the taste, the politeness, or the culture of true civilization. The gentlemen measured their fortune by the number of their marble palaces, baths, slaves, and gilded carriages; the ladies indulged in raiment of silk and gold ornamented with secular or religious figures, and in heavy golden necklaces, bracelets, and rings, and went to church in the same flaunting dress as to the theatre.

Ammianus Marcellinus gives the most graphic account of the extravagant and tasteless luxury of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth century; which Gibbon has admirably translated and explained in his 31st chapter.

It is true, these earnest protests against degeneracy themselves, as well as the honor in which monasticism and ascetic contempt of the world were universally held, attest the existence of a better spirit. But the uncontrollable progress of avarice, prodigality, voluptuousness, theatre going, intemperance, lewdness, in short, of all the heathen vices, which Christianity had come to eradicate, still carried the Roman empire and people with rapid strides toward dissolution, and gave it at last into the hands of the rude, but simple and morally vigorous barbarians. When the Christians were awakened by the crashings of the falling empire, and anxiously asked why God permitted it, Salvian, the Jeremiah of his time, answered: “Think of your vileness and your crimes, and see whether you are worthy of the divine protection.”

De gubern. Dei, l. iv. c. 12, p. 82.

§ 24. Byzantine Court Christianity.

The unnatural confusion of Christianity with the world culminated in the imperial court of Constantinople, which, it is true, never violated moral decency so grossly as the court of a Nero or a Domitian, but in vain pomp and prodigality far outdid the courts of the better heathen emperors, and degenerated into complete oriental despotism. The household of Constantius, according to the description of Libanius,

Lib., Epitaph. Julian.

“When Arcadius,” to borrow a graphic description from a modern historian, “condescended to reveal to the public the majesty of the sovereign, he was preceded by a vast multitude of attendants, dukes, tribunes, civil and military officers, their horses glittering with golden ornaments, with shields of gold set with precious stones, and golden lances. They proclaimed the coming of the emperor, and commanded the ignoble crowd to clear the streets before him. The emperor stood or reclined on a gorgeous chariot, surrounded by his immediate attendants, distinguished by shields with golden bosses set round with golden eyes, and drawn by white mules with gilded trappings; the chariot was set with precious stones, and golden fans vibrated with the movement, and cooled the air. The multitude contemplated at a distance the snow-white cushions, the silken carpets, with dragons inwoven upon them in rich colors. Those who were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the emperor, beheld his ears loaded with golden rings, his arms with golden chains, his diadem set with gems of all hues, his purple robes, which, with the diadem, were reserved for the emperor, in all their sutures embroidered with precious stones. The wondering people, on their return to their homes, could talk of nothing but the splendor of the spectacle: the robes, the mules, the carpets, the size and splendor of the jewels. On his return to the palace, the emperor walked on gold; ships were employed with the express purpose of bringing gold dust from remote provinces, which was strewn by the officious care of a host of attendants, so that the emperor rarely set his foot on the bare pavement.”

Milman: Hist. of Ancient Christianity, p. 440 (Am. ed.). Comp. the sketch of the court of Arcadius, which Montfaucon, in a treatise in the last volume of his Opera Chrys., and Müller: De genio, moribus, et luxu aevi Theodosiani, Copenh. 1798, have drawn, chiefly from the works of Chrysostom.

The Christianity of the Byzantine court lived in the atmosphere of intrigue, dissimulation, and flattery. Even the court divines and bishops could hardly escape the contamination, though their high office, with its sacred functions, was certainly a protecting wall around them. One of these bishops congratulated Constantine, at the celebration of the third decennium of his reign (the tricennalia), that he had been appointed by God ruler over all in this world, and would reign with the Son of God in the other! This blasphemous flattery was too much even for the vain emperor, and he exhorted the bishop rather to pray God that he might be worthy to be one of his servants in this world and the next.

Euseb. Vit. Const. iv. 48.

And these were bishops, of whom many still bore in their body the marks of the Diocletian persecution. So rapidly had changed the spirit of the age. While, on the other hand, the well-known firmness of Ambrose with Theodosius, and the life of Chrysostom, afford delightful proof that there were not wanting, even in this age, bishops of Christian earnestness and courage to rebuke the sins of crowned heads.

§ 25. Intrusion of Politics into Religion.

With the union of the church and the state begins the long and tedious history of their collisions and their mutual struggles for the mastery: the state seeking to subject the church to the empire, the church to subject the state to the hierarchy, and both very often transgressing the limits prescribed to their power in that word of the Lord: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” From the time of Constantine, therefore, the history of the church and that of the world in Europe are so closely interwoven, that neither can be understood without the other. On the one hand, the political rulers, as the highest members and the patrons of the church, claimed a right to a share in her government, and interfered in various ways in her external and internal affairs, either to her profit or to her prejudice. On the other hand, the bishops and patriarchs, as the highest dignitaries and officers of the state religion, became involved in all sorts of secular matters and in the intrigues of the Byzantine court. This mutual intermixture, on the whole, was of more injury than benefit to the church and to religion, and fettered her free and natural development.

Of a separation of religion and politics, of the spiritual power from the temporal, heathen antiquity knew nothing, because it regarded religion itself only from a natural point of view, and subjected it to the purposes of the all-ruling state, the highest known form of human society. The Egyptian kings, as Plutarch tells us, were at the same time priests, or were received into the priesthood at their election. In Greece the civil magistrate had supervision of the priests and sanctuaries.

This overseer was called βασιλεύς of the ἱερεῖς and ἱερά.

Now it may easily be supposed that the Christian emperors, who, down to Gratian (about 380), even retained the name and the insignia of the Pontifex Maximus, claimed the same oversight of the Christian religion established in the empire, which their predecessors had had of the heathen; only with this material difference, that they found here a stricter separation between the religious element and the political, the ecclesiastical and the secular, and were obliged to bind themselves to the already existing doctrines, usages, and traditions of the church which claimed divine institution and authority.

§ 26. The Emperor-Papacy and the Hierarchy.

And this, in point of fact, took place first under Constantine, and developed under his successors, particularly under Justinian, into the system of the Byzantine imperial papacy,

In England and Scotland the term Erastianism is used for this; but is less general, and not properly applicable at all to the Greek church. For the man who furnished the word, Thomas Erastus, a learned and able physician and professor of medicine in Heidelberg (died at Basle in Switzerland, 1583), was an opponent not only of the independence of the church toward the state, but also of the church ban and of the presbyterial constitution and discipline, as advocated by Frederick III., of the Palatinate, and the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, especially Olevianus, a pupil of Calvin. He was at last excommunicated for his views by the church council in Heidelberg.

Constantine once said to the bishops at a banquet, that he also, as a Christian emperor, was a divinely appointed bishop, a bishop over the external affairs of the church, while the internal affairs belonged to the bishops proper.

His words, which are to be taken neither in jest and pun (as Neander supposes), nor as mere compliment to the bishops, but in earnest, run thus, in Eusebius: Vita Const. l. iv. c. 24: Ὑμεῖς (the ἐπίσκοποι addressed) μέν τῶν εἴσω τῆς ἐκκλησίας, ἐγὼ δὲ τῶν ἐκτὸς ὑπὸ θεοῦ καθεσταμένος ἐπίσκοπος ἅν εἴην. All depends here on the intrepretation of the antithesis τῶμ εἴσω and τῶν ἐκτὸς τῆς ἐκκλησίας. (a) The explanation of Stroth and others takes the genitive as masculine, οἱ εἴσω denoting Christians, and οἱ ἐκτός heathens; so that Constantine ascribed to himself only a sort of episcopate in partibus infidelium. But this contradicts the connection; for Eusebius says immediately after, that he took a certain religious oversight over all his subjects (τοὺς ἀρχομένους ἅπαντας ἐπεσκόπει, etc.), and calls him also elsewhere a universal bishop ” (i. 44). (b) Gieseler’s interpretation is not much better (I. 2. § 92, not. 20, Amer. ed. vol. i. p. 371): that οἱ ἐκτός denotes all his subjects, Christian as well as non-Christian, but only in their civil relations, so far as they are outside the church. This entirely blunts the antithesis with οἱ εἴσω, and puts into the emperor’s mouth a mere commonplace instead of a new idea; for no one doubted his political sovereignty. (c) The genitive is rather to be taken as neuter in both cases, and πραγμάτων to be supplied. This agrees with usage (we find it in Polybius), and gives a sense which agrees with the view of Eusebius and with the whole practice of Constantine. There is, however, of course, another question: What is the proper distinction between τὰ εἴσω and τὰ ἐκτός the interna and externa of the church, or, what is much the same, between the sacerdotal jus in sacra and the imperial jus circa sacra. This Constantine and his age certainly could not themselves exactly define, since the whole relation was at that time as yet new and undeveloped.

Accordingly, though not yet even baptized, he acted as the patron and universal temporal bishop of the church;

Eusebius in fact calls him a divinely appointed universal bishop, οἷά τις κοινὸς ἐπίσκοπος ἐκ θεοῦ δακεσταμένος , συνόδους τῶν τοῦ θεοῦ λειτουργῶν συνεκρότει. Vit. Const. i. 44. His son Constantius was fond of being called ” bishop of bishops.”

This question became thenceforth the problem and the strife of history both sacred and secular, ran through the whole mediaeval conflict between emperor and pope, between imperial and hierarchical episcopacy, and recurs in modified form in every Protestant established church.

In general, from this time forth the prevailing view was, that God has divided all power between the priesthood and the kingdom (sacerdotium et imperium), giving internal or spiritual affairs, especially doctrine and worship, to the former, and external or temporal affairs, such as government and discipline, to the latter.

Justinian states the Byzantine theory thus, in the preface to the 6th Novel: “Maxima quidem in hominibus sunt dona Dei a superna collata clementia Sacerdotium et Imperium, et illud quidem divinis ministrans, hoc autem humanis praesidens ac diligentiam exhibens, ex uno eodemque principio utraque procedentia, humanam exornant vitam.” But he then ascribes to the Imperium the supervision of the Sacerdotium, and “maximam sollicitudinem circa vera Dei dogmata et circa Sacerdotum honestatem.” Later Greek emperors, on the ground of their anointing, even claimed a priestly character. Leo the Isaurian, for example, wrote to Pope Gregory II. in 730: βασιλεὺς καὶ ἱερεύς εἰμι (Mansi xii. 976). This, however, was contested even in the East, and the monk Maximus in 655 answered negatively the question put to him: “Ergo non est omnis Christianus imperator etiam sacerdos?” At first the emperor’s throne stood side by side with the bishop’s in the choir; but Ambrose gave the emperor a seat next to the choir. Yet, after the ancient custom, which the Concilium Quinisext., a.d.692, in its 69th canon, expressly confirmed, the emperors might enter the choir of the church, and lay their oblations in person upon the altar—a privilege which was denied to all the laity, and which implied at least a half-priestly character in the emperor. Gibbon’s statement needs correction accordingly (ch. xx.): “The monarch, whose spiritual rank is less honorable than that of the meanest deacon, was seated below the rails of the sanctuary, and confounded with the rest of the faithful multitude.”

The emperors after Constantine (as the popes after them) summoned the general councils, bore the necessary expenses, presided in the councils through commissions, gave to the decisions in doctrine and discipline the force of law for the whole Roman empire, and maintained them by their authority. The emperors nominated or confirmed the most influential metropolitans and patriarchs. They took part in all theological disputes, and thereby inflamed the passion of parties. They protected orthodoxy and punished heresy with the arm of power. Often, however, they took the heretical side, and banished orthodox bishops from their sees. Thus Arianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, and Monophysitism successively found favor and protection at court. Even empresses meddled in the internal and external concerns of the church. Justina endeavored with all her might to introduce Arianism in Milan, but met a successful opponent in bishop Ambrose. Eudoxia procured the deposition and banishment of the noble Chrysostom. Theodora, raised from the stage to the throne, ruled the emperor Justinian, and sought by every kind of intrigue to promote the victory of the Monophysite heresy. It is true, the doctrinal decisions proceeded properly from the councils, and could not have maintained themselves long without that sanction. But Basiliscus, Zeno, Justinian I., Heraclius, Constans II., and other emperors issued many purely ecclesiastical edicts and rescripts without consulting the councils, or through the councils by their own influence upon them. Justinian opens his celebrated codex with the imperial creed on the trinity and the imperial anathema against Nestorius, Eutyches, Apollinaris, on the basis certainly of the apostolic church and of the four ecumenical councils, but in the consciousness of absolute legislative and executive authority even over the faith and conscience of all his subjects.

The voice of the catholic church in this period conceded to the Christian emperors in general, with the duty of protecting and supporting the church, the right of supervision over its external affairs, but claimed for the clergy, particularly for the bishops, the right to govern her within, to fix her doctrine, to direct her worship. The new state of things was regarded as a restoration of the Mosaic and Davidic theocracy on Christian soil, and judged accordingly. But in respect to the extent and application of the emperor’s power in the church, opinion was generally determined, consciously or unconsciously, by some special religious interest. Hence we find that catholics and heretics, Athanasians and Arians, justified or condemned the interference of the emperor in the development of doctrine, the appointment and deposition of bishops, and the patronage and persecution of parties, according as they themselves were affected by them. The same Donatists who first appealed to the imperial protection, when the decision went against them denounced all intermeddling of the state with the church. There were bishops who justified even the most arbitrary excesses of the Byzantine despotism in religion by reference to Melchizedek and the pious kings of Israel, and yielded them selves willing tools of the court. But there were never wanting also fearless defenders of the rights of the church against the civil power. Maximus the Confessor declared before his judges in Constantinople, that Melchizedek was a type of Christ alone, not of the emperor.

In general the hierarchy formed a powerful and wholesome check on the imperial papacy, and preserved the freedom and independence of the church toward the temporal power. That age had only the alternative of imperial or episcopal despotism; and of these the latter was the less hurtful and the more profitable, because it represented the higher intellectual and moral interests. Without the hierarchy, the church in the Roman empire and among the barbarians would have been the football of civil and military despots. It was, therefore, of the utmost importance, that the church, at the time of her marriage with the state, had already grown so large and strong as to withstand all material alteration by imperial caprice, and all effort to degrade her into a tool. The Apostolic Constitutions place the bishops even above all kings and magistrates.

Lib. ii. c. 11, where the bishop is reminded of his exalted position, ὡς θεοὶ τύπον ἔχων ἐν ἀνθρώποις τῷ πάντων ἄρχειν ἀνθρώπων, ἱερέων, βασιλέων, ἀρχόντων, etc. Comp. c. 33 and 34.

The Western church, as a whole, preserved her independence far more than the Eastern; partly through the great firmness of the Roman character, partly through the favor of political circumstances, and of remoteness from the influence and the intrigues of the Byzantine court. Here the hierarchical principle developed itself from the time of Leo the Great even to the absolute papacy, which, however, after it fulfilled its mission for the world among the barbarian nations of the middle ages, degenerated into an insufferable tyranny over conscience, and thus exposed itself to destruction. In the Catholic system the freedom and independence of the church involve the supremacy of an exclusive priesthood and papacy; in the Protestant, they can be realized only on the broader basis of the universal priesthood, in the self-government of the Christian people; though this is, as yet, in all Protestant established churches more or less restricted by the power of the state.

§ 27. Restriction of Religious Freedom, and Beginnings of Persecution of Heretics.

Sam. Eliot: History of Liberty. Boston, 1858, 4 vols. Early Christians, vols. i. and ii. The most important facts are scattered through the sections of the larger church histories on the heresies, the doctrinal controversies, and church discipline.

An inevitable consequence of the union of church and state was restriction of religious freedom in faith and worship, and the civil punishment of departure from the doctrine and discipline of the established church.

The church, dominant and recognized by the state, gained indeed external freedom and authority, but in a measure at the expense of inward liberty and self-control. She came, as we have seen in the previous section, under the patronage and supervision of the head of the Christian state, especially in the Byzantine empire. In the first three centuries, the church, with all her external lowliness and oppression, enjoyed the greater liberty within, in the development of her doctrines and institutions, by reason of her entire separation from the state.

But the freedom of error and division was now still more restricted. In the ante-Nicene age, heresy and schism were as much hated and abhorred indeed, as afterward, yet were met only in a moral way, by word and writing, and were punished with excommunication from the rights of the church. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and even Lactantius were the first advocates of the principle of freedom of conscience, and maintained, against the heathen, that religion was essentially a matter of free will, and could be promoted only by instruction and persuasion not by outward force.

Just. Mart. Apol. i. 2, 4, 12; Tertull. Apolog. c. 24, 28; Ad Scapul.c. 2; Lactant. Instit. v. 19, 20; Epit. c. 54. Comp. vol. i. § 51.

This persecution of heretics was a natural consequence of the union of religious and civil duties and rights, the confusion of the civil and the ecclesiastical, the judicial and the moral, which came to pass since Constantine. It proceeded from the state and from the emperors, who in this respect showed themselves the successors of the Pontifices Maximi, with their relation to the church reversed. The church, indeed, steadfastly adhered to the principle that, as such, she should employ only spiritual penalties, excommunication in extreme cases; as in fact Christ and the apostles expressly spurned and prohibited all carnal weapons, and would rather suffer and die than use violence. But, involved in the idea of Jewish theocracy and of a state church, she practically confounded in various ways the position of the law and that of the gospel, and in theory approved the application of forcible measures to heretics, and not rarely encouraged and urged the state to it; thus making herself at least indirectly responsible for the persecution. This is especially, true of the Roman church in the times of her greatest power, in the middle age and down to the end of the sixteenth century; and by this course that church has made herself almost more offensive in the eyes of the world and of modern civilization than by her peculiar doctrines and usages. The Protestant reformation dispelled the dream that Christianity was identical with an outward organization, or the papacy, and gave a mighty shock thereby to the principle of ecclesiastical exclusiveness. Yet, properly speaking, it was not till the eighteenth century that a radical revolution of views was accomplished in regard to religious toleration; and the progress of toleration and free worship has gone hand in hand with the gradual loosening of the state-church basis and with the clearer separation of civil and religious rights and of the temporal and spiritual power.

In the, beginning of his reign, Constantine proclaimed full freedom of religion (312), and in the main continued tolerably true to it; at all events he used no violent measures, as his successors did. This toleration, however, was not a matter of fixed principle with him, but merely of temporary policy; a necessary consequence of the incipient separation of the Roman throne from idolatry, and the natural transition from the sole supremacy of the heathen religion to the same supremacy of the Christian. Intolerance directed itself first against heathenism; but as the false religion gradually died out of itself, and at any rate had no moral energy for martyrdom, there resulted no such bloody persecutions of idolatry under the Christian emperors, as there had been of Christianity under their heathen predecessors. Instead of Christianity, the intolerance of the civil power now took up Christian heretics, whom it recognized as such. Constantine even in his day limited the freedom and the privileges which he conferred, to the catholic, that is, the prevailing orthodox hierarchical church, and soon after the Council of Nice, by an edict of the year 326, expressly excluded heretics and schismatics from these privileges.

Cod. Theod. xvi. 5, 1: Privilegia, quae contemplatione religionis indulta sunt, catholicae tantum legis observatoribus prodesse opportet. Haereticos autem atque schismaticos non tantum ab his privilegiis alienos esse volumus, sed etiam diversis muneribus constringi et subjici.

Under Julian the Apostate religious liberty was again proclaimed, but only as the beginning of return to the exclusive establishment of heathenism; the counterpart, therefore, of Constantine’s toleration. After his early death Arianism again prevailed, at least in the East, and showed itself more, intolerant and violent than the catholic orthodoxy.

At last Theodosius the Great, the first emperor who was baptized in the Nicene faith, put an end to the Arian interregnum, proclaimed the exclusive authority of the Nicene creed, and at the same time enacted the first rigid penalties not only against the pagan idolatry, the practice of which was thenceforth a capital crime in the empire, but also against all Christian heresies and sects. The ruling principle of his public life was the unity of the empire and of the orthodox church. Soon after his baptism, in 380, he issued, in connection with his weak coëmperors, Gratian and Valentinian II., to the inhabitants of Constantinople, then the chief seat of Arianism, the following edict: “We, the three emperors, will, that all our subjects steadfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by St. Peter to the Romans, which has been faithfully preserved by tradition, and which is now professed by the pontiff Damasus, of Rome, and Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the institution of the apostles and the doctrine of the gospel, let us believe in the one Godhead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, of equal majesty in the holy Trinity. We order that the adherents of this faith be called Catholic Christians; we brand all the senseless followers of other religions with the infamous name of heretics, and forbid their conventicles assuming the name of churches. Besides the condemnation of divine justice, they must expect the heavy penalties which our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict.”

Cod. Theod. xvi, 1, 2. Baronius (Ann.), and even Godefroy call this edict which in this case, to be sure, favored the true doctrine, but involves the absolute despotism of the emperor over faith, an “edictum aureum, pium et salutare.”

From Theodosius therefore dates the state-church theory of the persecution of heretics, and the embodiment of it in legislation. His primary design, it is true, was rather to terrify and convert, than to punish, the refractory subjects.

So Sozomen asserts, l. vii. c. 12.

From the theory, however, to the practice was a single step; and this step his rival and colleague, Maximus, took, when, at the instigation of the unworthy bishop Ithacius, he caused the Spanish bishop, Priscillian, with six respectable adherents of his Manichaean-like sect (two presbyters, two deacons, the poet Latronian, and Euchrocia, a noble matron of Bordeaux), to be tortured and beheaded with the sword at Treves in 385. This was the first shedding of the blood of heretics by a Christian prince for religious opinions. The bishops assembled at Treves, with the exception of Theognistus, approved this act.

But the better feeling of the Christian church shrank from it with horror. The bishops Ambrose of Milan,

Epist. xxiv. ad Valentin. (tom. ii. p. 891). He would have nothing to do with bishops, “qui aliquos, devios licet a fide, ad necem petebant.”

The execution of the Priscillianists is the only instance of the bloody punishment of heretics in this period, as it is the first in the history of Christianity. But the propriety of violent measures against heresy was thenceforth vindicated even by the best fathers of the church. Chrysostom recommends, indeed, Christian love toward heretics and heathens, and declares against their execution, but approved the prohibition of their assemblies and the confiscation of their churches; and he acted accordingly against the Novatians and the Quartodecimanians, so that many considered his own subsequent misfortunes as condign punishment.

Hom. xxix. and xlvi. in Matt. Comp. Socrat. H. E. vi. 19. Elsewhere his principle was (in Phocam mart. et c. haer. tom. ii. p. 705): Ἐμοὶ ἔθος ἐστὶ διώκεσθαι καὶ μὴ διώκειν; that is, he himself would rather suffer injury than inflict injury.

Augustine, who himself belonged nine years to the Manichaean sect, and was wonderfully converted by the grace of God to the Catholic church, without the slightest pressure from without, held at first the truly evangelical view, that heretics and schismatics should not be violently dealt with, but won by instruction and conviction; but after the year 400 he turned and retracted this view, in consequence of his experience with the Donatists, whom he endeavored in vain to convert by disputation and writing, while many submitted to the imperial laws.

Epist. 93, ad Vincent. § 17: “Mea primitus sententia non erat, nisi neminem ad unitatem Christi esse cogendum, verbo esse agendum, disputatione pugnandum, ratione vincendum, ne fictos catholicos haberemus, quos apertos haereticos noveramus. Sed—he continues § haec opinio mea non contradicentium verbis, sed demonstrantium superabatur exemplis.” Then he adduces his experience with the Donatists. Comp. Retract. ii. 5.

Henceforth none but the persecuted parties, from time to time, protested against religious persecution; being made, by their sufferings, if not from principle, at least from policy and self-interest, the advocates of toleration. Thus the Donatist bishop Petilian, in Africa, against whom Augustine wrote, rebukes his Catholic opponents, as formerly his countryman Tertullian had condemned the heathen persecutors of the Christians, for using outward force in matters of conscience; appealing to Christ and the apostles, who never persecuted, but rather suffered and died. “Think you,” says he, “to serve God by killing us with your own hand? Ye err, ye err, if ye, poor mortals, think this; God has not hangmen for priests. Christ teaches us to bear wrong, not to revenge it.” The Donatist bishop Gaudentius says: “God appointed prophets and fishermen, not princes and soldiers, to spread the faith.” Still we cannot forget, that the Donatists were the first who appealed to the imperial tribunal in an ecclesiastical matter, and did not, till after that tribunal had decided against them, turn against the state-church system.

§ 29. Development of Monasticism.

In the historical development of the monastic institution we must distinguish four stages. The first three were completed in the fourth century; the remaining one reached maturity in the Latin church of the middle age.

The first stage is an ascetic life as yet not organized nor separated from the church. It comes down from the ante-Nicene age, and has been already noticed. It now took the form, for the most part, of either hermit or coenobite life, but continued in the church itself, especially among the clergy, who might be called half monks.

The second stage is hermit life or anchoretism.

From ἀναχωρέω, to retire (from human society), ἀναχωρητής, ἐρημίτης(from ἐρημία, a desert). The word μοναχός(from μόνος, alone, and μονάζειν, to live alone), monachus (whence monk), also points originally to solitary, hermit life, but is commonly synonymous with coenobite or friar.

The third step in the progress of the monastic life brings us to coenobitism or cloister life, monasticism in the ordinary sense of the word.

Κοινόβιον, coenobium; from κοινός βίος, vita communis; then the congregation of monks; sometimes also used for the building. In the same sense μάνδρα, stable, fold, and μοναστήριον, claustrum (whence cloister). Also λαύραι, laurae (literally, streets), that is cells, of which usually a number were built not far apart, so as to form a hamlet. Hence this term is often used in the same sense as monasterium. The singular, λαῦρα, however, answers to the anchoret life. On this nomenclature of monasticism comp. Du Cange, in the Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis, under the respective words.

The same social impulse, finally, which produced monastic congregations, led afterward to monastic orders, unions of a number of cloisters under one rule and a common government. In this fourth and last stage monasticism has done most for the diffusion of Christianity and the advancement of learning,

Hence Middleton says, not without reason: “By all which I have ever read of the old, and have seen of the modern monks, I take the preference to be clearly due to the last, as having a more regular discipline, more good learning, and less superstition among them than the first.”

§ 30. Nature and Aim of Monasticism.

Monasticism was from the first distinguished as the contemplative life from the practical.

Βίος θεωρητικός , and βίος πρακτικός, according to Gregory Nazianzen and others. Throughout the middle age the distinction between the vita contemplativa and the vita activa was illustrated by the two sisters of Lazarus, Luke x. 38-42.

Voluntary poverty, voluntary celibacy, and absolute obedience form the three monastic vows, as they are called, and are supposed to constitute a higher virtue and to secure a higher reward in heaven.

But this threefold self-denial is only the negative side of the matter, and a means to an end. It places man beyond the reach of the temptations connected with earthly possessions, married life, and independent will, and facilitates his progress toward heaven. The positive aspect of monasticism is unreserved surrender of the whole man, with all his time and strength, to God; though, as we have said, not within, but without the sphere of society and the order of nature. This devoted life is employed in continual prayer, meditation, fasting, and castigation of the body. Some votaries went so far as to reject all bodily employment, for its interference with devotion. But in general a moderate union of spiritual exercises with scientific studies or with such manual labor as agriculture, basket making, weaving, for their own living and the support of the poor, was held not only lawful but wholesome for monks. It was a proverb, that a laborious monk was beset by only one devil; an idle one, by a legion.

With all the austerities and rigors of asceticism, the monastic life had its spiritual joys and irresistible charms for noble, contemplative, and heaven-aspiring souls, who fled from the turmoil and vain show of the city as a prison, and turned the solitude into a paradise of freedom and sweet communion with God and his saints; while to others the same solitude became a fruitful nursery of idleness, despondency, and the most perilous temptations and ultimate ruin.

Comp. the truthful remark of Yves de Chartres, of the twelfth century, Ep. 192 (quoted by Montalembert): “Non beatum faciunt hominem secreta sylvarum, cacumina montium, si secum non habet solitudinem mentis, sabbatum cordis, tranquillitatem conscientiae, ascensiones in corde, sine quibus omnem solitudinem comitantur mentis acedia, curiositas, vana gloria, periculosae tentationum procellae.”

§ 31. Monasticism and the Bible.

Monasticism, therefore, claims to be the highest and purest form of Christian piety and virtue, and the surest way to heaven. Then, we should think, it must be preëminently commended in the Bible, and actually exhibited in the life of Christ and the apostles. But just in this biblical support it falls short.

The advocates of it uniformly refer first to the examples of Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist;

So Jerome, Ep. 49 (ed. Ben.), ad Paulinum, where he adduces, besides Elijah and John, Isaiah also and the sons of the prophets, as the fathers of monasticism; and in his Vita Pauli, where, however, he more correctly designates Paul of Thebes and Anthonyas the first hermits, properly so called, in distinction from the prophets. Comp. also Sozomen: H. E., 1. i. c. 12: Ταύτης δὲ τῆς ἀρίστης φιλοσοφίας ἤρξατο, ωὝς τινες λέγουσιν, Ἡλίας ὁ προφήτης καὶ Ἰωάννης ὁ βαπτιστής. This appeal to the example of Elijah and John the Baptist has become traditional with Catholic writers on the subject. Alban Butler says, under Jan. 15, in the life of Paul of Thebes: “Elias and John the Baptist sanctified the deserts, and Jesus Christ himself was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days’ fast in the wilderness; neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost conducted the saint of this day (Paul of Thebes) into the desert, and was to him an instructor there.”

The next appeal is to a few isolated passages of the New Testament, which do not, indeed, in their literal sense require the renunciation of property and marriage, yet seem to recommend it as a special, exceptional form of piety for those Christians who strive after higher perfection.

Hence called consilia evangelica, in distinction from mandata divina; after 1 Cor. vii. 25, where Paul does certainly make a similar distinction. The consilium and votum paupertatis is based on Matt. xix. 21; the votum castitatis, on 1 Cor. vii. 8, 25, 38-40. For the votum obedientiae no particular text is quoted. The theory appears substantially as early as in Origen, and was in him not merely a personal opinion, but the reflex of a very widely spread practice. Comp. vol. i. § 94 and 95.

Finally, as respects the spirit of the monastic life, reference is sometimes made even to the poverty of Christ and his apostles, to the silent, contemplative Mary, in contrast with the busy, practical Martha, and to the voluntary community of goods in the first Christian church in Jerusalem.

But this monastic interpretation of primitive Christianity mistakes a few incidental points of outward resemblance for essential identity, measures the spirit of Christianity by some isolated passages, instead of explaining the latter from the former, and is upon the whole a miserable emaciation and caricature. The gospel makes upon all men virtually the same moral demand, and knows no distinction of a religion for the masses and another for the few.

Jesus, the model for all believers, was neither a coenobite, nor an anchoret, nor an ascetic of any kind, but the perfect pattern man for universal imitation. There is not a trace of monkish austerity and ascetic rigor in his life or precepts, but in all his acts and words a wonderful harmony of freedom and purity, of the most comprehensive charity and spotless holiness. He retired to the mountains and into solitude, but only temporarily, and for the purpose of renewing his strength for active work. Amidst the society of his disciples, of both sexes, with kindred and friends, in Cana and Bethany, at the table of publicans and sinners, and in intercourse with all classes of the people, he kept himself unspotted from the world, and transfigured the world into the kingdom of God. His poverty and celibacy have nothing to do with asceticism, but represent, the one the condescension of his redeeming love, the other his ideal uniqueness and his absolutely peculiar relation to the whole church, which alone is fit or worthy to be his bride. No single daughter of Eve could have been an equal partner of the Saviour of mankind, or the representative head of the new creation.

The example of the sister of Lazarus proves only, that the contemplative life may dwell in the same house with the practical, and with the other sex, but justifies no separation from the social ties.

The life of the apostles and primitive Christians in general was anything but a hermit life; else had not the gospel spread so quickly to all the cities of the Roman world. Peter was married, and travelled with his wife as a missionary. Paul assumes one marriage of the clergy as the rule, and notwithstanding his personal and relative preference for celibacy in the then oppressed condition of the church, he is the most zealous advocate of evangelical freedom, in opposition to all legal bondage and anxious asceticism.

Monasticism, therefore, in any case, is not the normal form of Christian piety. It is an abnormal phenomenon, a humanly devised service of God,

Comp. Col. ii. 16-23.

§ 32. Lights and Shades of Monastic Life.

The contrast between pure and normal Bible-Christianity and abnormal Monastic Christianity, will appear more fully if we enter into a close examination of the latter as it actually appeared in the ancient church.

The extraordinary rapidity with which this world-forsaking form of piety spread, bears witness to a high degree of self-denying moral earnestness, which even in its mistakes and vagrancies we must admire. Our age, accustomed and wedded to all possible comforts, but far in advance of the Nicene age in respect to the average morality of the masses, could beget no such ascetic extremes. In our estimate of the diffusion and value of monasticism, the polluting power of the theatre, oppressive taxation, slavery, the multitude of civil wars, and the hopeless condition of the Roman empire, must all come into view. Nor must we, by any means, measure the moral importance of this phenomenon by numbers. Monasticism from the beginning attracted persons of opposite character and from opposite motives. Moral earnestness and religious enthusiasm were accompanied here, as formerly in martyrdom, though even in larger measure than there, with all kinds of sinister motives; indolence, discontent, weariness of life, misanthropy, ambition for spiritual distinction, and every sort of misfortune or accidental circumstance. Palladius, to mention but one illustrious example, tells of Paul the Simple,

Ἄπλαστος, lit. not moulded; hence natural, sincere.

In view of these different motives we need not be surprised that the moral character of the monks varied greatly, and presents opposite extremes. Augustine says he found among the monks and nuns the best and the worst of mankind.

Looking more closely, in the first place, at anchoretism, we meet in its history unquestionably many a heroic character, who attained an incredible mastery over his sensual nature, and, like the Old Testament prophets and John the Baptist, by their mere appearance and their occasional preaching, made an overwhelming impression on his contemporaries, even among the heathen. St. Anthony’s visit to Alexandria was to the gazing multitude like the visit of a messenger from the other world, and resulted in many conversions. His emaciated face, the glare of his eye, his spectral yet venerable form, his contempt of the world, and his few aphoristic sentences told more powerfully on that age and people than a most elaborate sermon. St. Symeon, standing on a column from year to year, fasting, praying, and exhorting the visitors to repentance, was to his generation a standing miracle and a sign that pointed them to heaven. Sometimes, in seasons of public calamity, such hermits saved whole cities and provinces from the imperial wrath, by their effectual intercessions. When Theodosius, in 387, was about to destroy Antioch for a sedition, the hermit Macedonius met the two imperial commissaries, who reverently dismounted and kissed his hands and feet; he reminded them and the emperor of their own weakness, set before them the value of men as immortal images of God, in comparison with the perishable statues of the emperor, and thus saved the city from demolition.

In Theodoret: Hist. relig. c. (vita) 13.

But this moral heroism—and these are the weak points of it—oversteps not only the present standard of Christianity, but all sound measure; it has no support either in the theory or the practice of Christ and the apostolic church; and it has far more resemblance to heathen than to biblical precedents. Many of the most eminent saints of the desert differ only in their Christian confession, and in some Bible phrases learnt by rote, from Buddhist fakirs and Mohammedan dervises. Their highest virtuousness consisted in bodily exercises of their own devising, which, without love, at best profit nothing at all, very often only gratify spiritual vanity, and entirely obscure the gospel way of salvation.

To illustrate this by a few examples, we may choose any of the most celebrated eastern anchorets of the fourth and fifth centuries, as reported by the most credible contemporaries.

The holy Scriptures instruct us to pray and to labor; and to pray not only mechanically with the lips, as the heathen do, but with all the heart. But Paul the Simple said daily three hundred prayers, counting them with pebbles, which he carried in his bosom (a sort of rosary); when he heard of a virgin who prayed seven hundred times a day, he was troubled, and told his distress to Macarius, who well answered him: “Either thou prayest not with thy heart, if thy conscience reproves thee, or thou couldst pray oftener. I have for six years prayed only a hundred times a day, without being obliged to condemn myself for neglect.” Christ ate and drank like other men, expressly distinguishing himself thereby from John, the representative of the old covenant; and Paul recommends to us to use the gifts of God temperately, with cheerful and childlike gratitude.

Comp. Matt. xi. 18, 19; 1 Tim. iv. 3-5.

Anchoretism almost always carries a certain cynic roughness and coarseness, which, indeed, in the light of that age, may be leniently judged, but certainly have no affinity with the morality of the Bible, and offend not only good taste, but all sound moral feeling. The ascetic holiness, at least according to the Egyptian idea, is incompatible with cleanliness and decency, and delights in filth. It reverses the maxim of sound evangelical morality and modern Christian civilization, that cleanliness is next to godliness. Saints Anthony and Hilarion, as their admirers, Athanasius the Great and Jerome the Learned, tell us, scorned to comb or cut their hair (save once a year, at Easter), or to wash their hands or feet. Other hermits went almost naked in the wilderness, like the Indian gymnosophists.

These latter themselves were not absolutely naked, but wore a covering over the middle, as Augustine, in the passage above cited, De Civit. Dei, l. xiv. c. 17, and later tourists tell us. On the contrary, there were monks who were very scrupulous on this point. It is said of Ammon, that he never saw himself naked. The monks in Tabennae, according to the rule of Pachomius, had to sleep always in their clothes.

It is no recommendation to these ascetic eccentricities that while they are without Scripture authority, they are fully equalled and even surpassed by the strange modes of self-torture practised by ancient and modern Hindoo devotees, for the supposed benefit of their souls and the gratification of their vanity in the presence of admiring spectators. Some bury themselves—we are told by ancient and modern travellers—in pits with only small breathing holes at the top, while others disdaining to touch the vile earth, live in iron cages suspended from trees. Some wear heavy iron collars or fetters, or drag a heavy chain fastened by one end round their privy parts, to give ostentatious proof of their chastity. Others keep their fists hard shut, until their finger nails grow through the palms of their hands. Some stand perpetually on one leg; others keep their faces turned over one shoulder, until they cannot turn them back again. Some lie on wooden beds, bristling all over with iron spikes; others are fastened for life to the trunk of a tree by a chain. Some suspend themselves for half an hour at a time, feet uppermost, or with a hook thrust through their naked back, over a hot fire. Alexander von Humboldt, at Astracan, where some Hindoos had settled, found a Yogi in the vestibule of the temple naked, shrivelled up, and overgrown with hair like a wild beast, who in this position had withstood for twenty years the severe winters of that climate. A Jesuit missionary describes one of the class called Tapasonias, that he had his body enclosed in an iron cage, with his head and feet outside, so that he could walk, but neither sit nor lie down; at night his pious attendants attached a hundred lighted lamps to the outside of the cage, so that their master could exhibit himself walking as the mock light of the world.

See Ruffner, l.c. i. 49 sqq., and Wuttke, l.c. p. 369 sqq.

In general, the hermit life confounds the fleeing from the outward world with the mortification of the inward world of the corrupt heart. It mistakes the duty of love; not rarely, under its mask of humility and the utmost self-denial, cherishes spiritual pride and jealousy; and exposes itself to all the dangers of solitude, even to savage barbarism, beastly grossness, or despair and suicide. Anthony, the father of anchorets, well understood this, and warned his followers against overvaluing solitude, reminding them of the proverb of the Preacher, iv. 10: “Woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.”

The cloister life was less exposed to these errors. It approached the life of society and civilization. Yet, on the other hand, it produced no such heroic phenomena, and had dangers peculiar to itself. Chrysostom gives us the bright side of it from his own experience. “Before the rising of the sun,” says he of the monks of Antioch, “they rise, hale and sober, sing as with one mouth hymns to the praise of God, then bow the knee in prayer, under the direction of the abbot, read the holy Scriptures, and go to their labors; pray again at nine, twelve, and three o’clock; after a good day’s work, enjoy a simple meal of bread and salt, perhaps with oil, and sometimes with pulse; sing a thanksgiving hymn, and lay themselves on their pallets of straw without care, grief, or murmur. When one dies, they say: ’He is perfected;’ and all pray God for a like end, that they also may come to the eternal sabbath-rest and to the vision of Christ.” Men like Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory, Jerome, Nilus, and Isidore, united theological studies with the ascetic exercises of solitude, and thus gained a copious knowledge of Scripture and a large spiritual experience.

But most of the monks either could not even read, or had too little intellectual culture to devote themselves with advantage to contemplation and study, and only brooded over gloomy feelings, or sank, in spite of the unsensual tendency of the ascetic principle, into the coarsest anthropomorphism and image worship. When the religious enthusiasm faltered or ceased, the cloister life, like the hermit life, became the most spiritless and tedious routine, or hypocritically practised secret vices. For the monks carried with them into their solitude their most dangerous enemy in their hearts, and there often endured much fiercer conflicts with flesh and blood, than amidst the society of men.

The temptations of sensuality, pride, and ambition externalized and personified themselves to the anchorets and monks in hellish shapes, which appeared in visions and dreams, now in pleasing and seductive, now in threatening and terrible forms and colors, according to the state of mind at the time. The monastic imagination peopled the deserts and solitudes with the very worst society, with swarms of winged demons and all kinds of hellish monsters.

According to a sensuous and local conception of Eph. vi. 12· Τὰ πνευματικὰ τῆς πονηρίας ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ; “die bösen Geister unter dem Himmel” (evil spirits under heaven), as Luther translates; while the Vulgate gives it literally, but somewhat obscurely: “Spiritualia nequitiae in coelestibus;” and the English Bible quite too freely: “Spiritual wickedness in high places.” In any case πνευματικά is to be taken in a much wider sense than πνεύματα or δαιμόνια; and ἐπουράνια, also, is not fully identical with the cloud heaven or the atmosphere, and besides admits a different construction, so that many put a comma after πονηρίας. The monastic satanology and demonology, we may remark, was universally received in the ancient church and throughout the middle ages. And it is well known that Luther retained from his monastic life a sensuous, materialistic idea of the devil and of his influence on men.

Especially besetting were the temptations of sensuality, and irresistible without the utmost exertion and constant watchfulness. The same saints, who could not conceive of true chastity without celibacy, were disturbed, according to their own confession, by unchaste dreams, which at least defiled the imagination.

Athanasius says of St. Anthony, that the devil sometimes appeared to him in the form of a woman; Jerome relates of St. Hilarion, that in bed his imagination was often beset with visions of naked women. Jerome himself acknowledges, in a letter to a virgin (!), Epist. xxii. (ed. Vallars. t. i. p. 91, 92), de Custodia Virginitatis, ad Eustochium: “O quoties ego ipse in eremo constitutus et in illa vasta solitudine, quae exusta solis ardoribus horridum monachis praebebat habitaculum, putavi me Romanis interesse deliciis .... Ille igitur ego, qui ob gehennae metum tali me carcere ipse damnaveram, scorpionum tantum socius et ferarum, saepe choris intereram puellarum. Pallebant ora jejuniis, et mens desideriis aestuabat in frigido corpore, et ante hominem suum jam in carne praemortuum, sola libidinum incendia bulliebant. Itaque omni auxilio destitutus, ad Jesu jacebam pedes, rigabam lacrymis, crine tergebam et repugnantem carnem hebdomadarum inedia subjugabam.” St. Ephraim warns against listening to the enemy, who whispers to the monk: Οὐ δυνατὸν παύσασθει ἀπό σου, ἐὰν μὴ πληροφορήσῃς ἐπιθυμίαν σου.

A characteristic trait of monasticism in all its forms is a morbid aversion to female society and a rude contempt of married life. No wonder, then, that in Egypt and the whole East, the land of monasticism, women and domestic life never attained their proper dignity, and to this day remain at a very low stage of culture. Among the rules of Basil is a prohibition of speaking with a woman, touching one, or even looking on one, except in unavoidable cases. Monasticism not seldom sundered the sacred bond between husband and wife, commonly with mutual consent, as in the cases of Ammon and Nilus, but often even without it. Indeed, a law of Justinian seems to give either party an unconditional right of desertion, while yet the word of God declares the marriage bond indissoluble. The Council of Gangra found it necessary to oppose the notion that marriage is inconsistent with salvation, and to exhort wives to remain with their husbands. In the same way monasticism came into conflict with love of kindred, and with the relation of parents to children; misinterpreting the Lord’s command to leave all for His sake. Nilus demanded of the monks the entire suppression of the sense of blood relationship. St. Anthony forsook his younger sister, and saw her only once after the separation. His disciple, Prior, when he became a monk, vowed never to see his kindred again, and would not even speak with his sister without closing his eyes. Something of the same sort is recorded of Pachomius. Ambrose and Jerome, in full earnest, enjoined upon virgins the cloister life, even against the will of their parents. When Hilary of Poictiers heard that his daughter wished to marry, he is said to have prayed God to take her to himself by death. One Mucius, without any provocation, caused his own son to be cruelly abused, and at last, at the command of the abbot himself, cast him into the water, whence he was rescued by a brother of the cloister.

Tillem. vii. 430. The abbot thereupon, as Tillemont relates, was informed by a revelation, ”que Muce avait egalé par son obeissance celle d’Abraham,” and soon after made him his successor.

Even in the most favorable case monasticism falls short of harmonious moral development, and of that symmetry of virtue which meets us in perfection in Christ, and next to him in the apostles. It lacks the finer and gentler traits of character, which are ordinarily brought out only in the school of daily family life and under the social ordinances of God. Its morality is rather negative than positive. There is more virtue in the temperate and thankful enjoyment of the gifts of God, than in total abstinence; in charitable and well-seasoned speech, than in total silence; in connubial chastity, than in celibacy; in self-denying practical labor for the church. than in solitary asceticism, which only pleases self and profits no one else.

Catholicism, whether Greek or Roman, cannot dispense with the monastic life. It knows only moral extremes, nothing of the healthful mean. In addition to this, popery needs the monastic orders, as an absolute monarchy needs large standing armies both for conquest and defence. But evangelical Protestantism, rejecting all distinction of a twofold morality, assigning to all men the same great duty under the law of God, placing the essence of religion not in outward exercises, but in the heart, not in separation from the world and from society, but in purifying and sanctifying the world by the free spirit of the gospel, is death to the great monastic institution.

§ 33. Position of Monks in the Church.

As to the social position of monasticism in the system of ecclesiastical life: it was at first, in East and West, even so late as the council of Chalcedon, regarded as a lay institution; but the monks were distinguished as religiosi from the seculares, and formed thus a middle grade between the ordinary laity and the clergy. They constituted the spiritual nobility, but not the ruling class; the aristocracy, but not the hierarchy of the church. “A monk,” says Jerome, “has not the office of a teacher, but of a penitent, who endures suffering either for himself or for the world.” Many monks considered ecclesiastical office incompatible with their effort after perfection. It was a proverb, traced to Pachomius: “A monk should especially shun women and bishops, for neither will let him have peace.”

Omnino monachum fugere debere mulieres et episcopos.

In dress, the monks at first adhered to the costume of the country, but chose the simplest and coarsest material. Subsequently, they adopted the tonsure and a distinctive uniform.

§ 34. Influence and Effect of Monasticism.

The influence of monasticism upon the world, from Anthony and Benedict to Luther and Loyola, is deeply marked in all branches of the history of the church. Here, too, we must distinguish light and shade. The operation of the monastic institution has been to some extent of diametrically opposite kinds, and has accordingly elicited the most diverse judgments. “It is impossible,” says Dean Milman,

Hist. of (ancient) Christianity, Am. ed., p. 432.

At the time of its origin, when we can view it from the most favorable point, the monastic life formed a healthful and necessary counterpart to the essentially corrupt and doomed social life of the Graeco-Roman empire, and the preparatory school of a new Christian civilization among the Romanic and Germanic nations of the middle age. Like the hierarchy and the papacy, it belongs with the disciplinary institutions, which the spirit of Christianity uses as means to a higher end, and, after attaining that end, casts aside. For it ever remains the great problem of Christianity to pervade like leaven and sanctify all human society in the family and the state, in science and art, and in all public life. The old Roman world, which was based on heathenism, was, if the moral portraitures of Salvianus and other writers of the fourth and fifth centuries are even half true, past all such transformation; and the Christian morality therefore assumed at the outset an attitude of downright hostility toward it, till she should grow strong enough to venture upon her regenerating mission among the new and, though barbarous, yet plastic and germinal nations of the middle age, and plant in them the seed of a higher civilization.

Monasticism promoted the downfall of heathenism and the victory of Christianity in the Roman empire and among the barbarians. It stood as a warning against the worldliness, frivolity, and immorality of the great cities, and a mighty call to repentance and conversion. It offered a quiet refuge to souls weary of the world, and led its earnest disciples into the sanctuary of undisturbed communion with God. It was to invalids a hospital for the cure of moral diseases, and at the same time, to healthy and vigorous enthusiasts an arena for the exercise of heroic virtue.

Chateaubriand commends the monastic institution mainly under the first view. “If there are refuges for the health of the body, ah ! permit religion to have such also for the health of the soul, which is still more subject to sickness, and the infirmities of which are so much more sad, so much more tedious and difficult to cure!” Montalembert (l.c. i. 25) objects to this view as poetic and touching but false, and represents monasticism as an arena for the healthiest and strongest souls which the world has ever produced, and quotes the passage of Chrysostom: “Come and see the tents of the soldiers of Christ; come and see their order of battle; they fight every day, and every day they defeat and immolate the passions which assail us.”

But on the other hand, monasticism withdrew from society many useful forces; diffused an indifference for the family life, the civil and military service of the state, and all public practical operations; turned the channels of religion from the world into the desert, and so hastened the decline of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and the whole Roman empire. It nourished religious fanaticism, often raised storms of popular agitation, and rushed passionately into the controversies of theological parties; generally, it is true, on the side of orthodoxy, but often, as at the Ephesian “council of robbers,” in favor of heresy, and especially in behalf of the crudest superstition. For the simple, divine way of salvation in the gospel, it substituted an arbitrary, eccentric, ostentatious, and pretentious sanctity. It darkened the all-sufficient merits of Christ by the glitter of the over-meritorious works of man. It measured virtue by the quantity of outward exercises instead of the quality of the inward disposition, and disseminated self-righteousness and an anxious, legal, and mechanical religion. It favored the idolatrous veneration of Mary and of saints, the worship of images and relics, and all sorts of superstitious and pious fraud. It circulated a mass of visions and miracles, which, if true, far surpassed the miracles of Christ and the apostles and set all the laws of nature and reason at defiance. The Nicene age is full of the most absurd monks’ fables, and is in this respect not a whit behind the darkest of the middle ages.

The monkish miracles, with which the Vitae Patrum of the Jesuit Rosweyde and the Acta Sanctorum swarm, often contradict all the laws of nature and of reason, and would be hardly worthy of mention, but that they come from such fathers as Jerome, Rufinus, Severus, Palladius, and Theodoret, and go to characterize the Nicene age. We are far from rejecting all and every one as falsehood and deception, and accepting the judgment of Isaac Taylor (Ancient Christianity, ii. 106): “The Nicene miracles are of a kind which shocks every sentiment of gravity, of decency, and of piety:—in their obvious features they are childish, horrid, blasphemous, and foul.” Much more cautious is the opinion of Robertson (Hist. of the Christian Church, i. 312) and other Protestant historians, who suppose that, together with the innocent illusions of a heated imagination and the fabrications of intentional fraud, there must have been also much that was real, though in the nature of the case an exact sifting is impossible. But many of these stories are too much even for Roman credulity, and are either entirely omitted or at least greatly reduced and modified by critical historians. We read not only of innumerable visions, prophecies, healings of the sick and the possessed, but also of raising of the dead (as in the life of Martin of Tours), of the growth of a dry stick into a fruitful tree, and of a monk’s passing unseared, in absolute obedience to his abbot, through a furnace of fire as through a cooling bath. (Comp. Sulp. Sever. Dial. i. c. 12 and 13.) Even wild beasts play a large part, and are transformed into rational servants of the Egyptian saints of the desert. At the funeral of Paul of Thebes, according to Jerome, two lions voluntarily performed the office of sexton. Pachomius walked unharmed over serpents and scorpions, and crossed the Nile on crocodiles, which, of their own accord, presented their backs. The younger Macarius, or (according to other statements of the Historia Lausiaca; comp. the investigation of Tillemont, tom. viii. p. 811 sqq.) the monk Marcus stood on so good terms with the beasts, that a hyena (according to Rufinus, V. P. ii. 4, it was a lioness) brought her young one to him in his cell, that he might open its eyes; which he did by prayer and application of spittle; and the next day she offered him, for gratitude, a large sheepskin; the saint at first declined the gift, and reproved the beast for the double crime of murder and theft, by which she had obtained the skin; but when the hyena showed repentance, and with a nod promised amendment, Macarius took the skin, and afterward bequeathed it to the great bishop Athanasius. Severus (Dial. i. c. 9) gives a very similar account of an unknown anchoret, but, like Rufinus, substitutes for the hyena of Palladius a lioness with five whelps, and makes the saint receive the present of the skin without scruple or reproof. Shortly before (c. 8), he speaks, however, of a wolf, which once robbed a friendly hermit, whose evening meal she was accustomed to share, showed deep repentance for it, and with bowed head begged forgiveness of the saint. Perhaps Palladius or his Latin translator has combined these two anecdotes.

§ 35. Paul of Thebes and St. Anthony.

I. Athanasius: Vita S. Antonii (in Greek, Opera, ed. Ben. ii. 793–866). The same in Latin, by Evagrius, in the fourth century. Jerome: Catal. c. 88 (a very brief notice of Anthony); Vita S. Pauli Theb. (Opera, ed. Vallars, ii. p. 1–12). Sozom: H. E. l. i. cap. 13 and 14. Socrat.: H. E. iv. 23, 25.

II. Acta Sanctorum, sub Jan. 17 (tom. ii. p. 107 sqq.). Tillemont: Mem. tom. vii. p. 101–144 (St. Antoine, premier père des solitaires d’Egypte). Butler (R.C.): Lives of the Saints, sub Jan. 17. Möhler (R.C.): Athanasius der Grosse, p. 382–402. Neander: K. G. iii. 446 sqq. (Torrey’s Engl. ed. ii. 229–234). Böhringer: Die Kirche Christi in Biographien, i. 2, p. 122–151. H. Ruffner: l.c. vol. i. p. 247–302 (a condensed translation from Athanasius, with additions). K. Hase: K. Gesch. § 64 (a masterly miniature portrait).

The first known Christian hermit, as distinct from the earlier ascetics, is the fabulous Paul of Thebes, in Upper Egypt. In the twenty-second year of his age, during the Decian persecution, a.d. 250, he retired to a distant cave, grew fond of the solitude, and lived there, according to the legend, ninety years, in a grotto near a spring and a palm tree, which furnished him food, shade, and clothing,

Pliny counts thirty-nine different sorts of palm trees, of which the best grow in Egypt, are ever green, have thick foliage, and bear a fruit, from which in some places bread is made.

The learned Jerome wrote the life of Paul, some thirty years afterward, as it appears, on the authority of Anathas and Macarius, two disciples of Anthony. But he remarks, in the prologue, that many incredible things are said of him, which are not worthy of repetition. If he believed his story of the grave-digging lions, it is hard to imagine what was more credible and less worthy of repetition.

In this Paul we have an example, of a canonized saint, who lived ninety years unseen and unknown in the wilderness, beyond all fellowship with the visible church, without Bible, public worship, or sacraments, and so died, yet is supposed to have attained the highest grade of piety. How does this consist with the common doctrine of the Catholic church respecting the necessity and the operation of the means of grace? Augustine, blinded by the ascetic spirit of his age, says even, that anchorets, on their level of perfection, may dispense with the Bible. Certain it is, that this kind of perfection stands not in the Bible, but outside of it.

The proper founder of the hermit life, the one chiefly instrumental in giving it its prevalence, was St. Anthony of Egypt. He is the most celebrated, the most original, and the most venerable representative of this abnormal and eccentric sanctity, the “patriarch of the monks,” and the “childless father of an innumerable seed.”

Jeromesays of Anthony, in his Vita Pauli Theb. (c. i.): “Non tam ipse auto omnes (eremitas) fuit, quam ab eo omnium incitata sunt studia.”

Anthony sprang from a Christian and honorable Coptic family, and was born about 251, at Coma, on the borders of the Thebaid. Naturally quiet, contemplative, and reflective, he avoided the society of playmates, and despised all higher learning. He understood only his Coptic vernacular, and remained all his life ignorant of Grecian literature and secular science.

According to the common opinion, which was also Augustine’s, Anthonycould not even read. But Tillemont (tom. vii. 107 and 666), Butler, and others think that this igorance related only to the Greek alphabet, not to the Egyptian. Athanasius, p. 795, expresses himself somewhat indistinctly; that, from dread of society, he would not μαθεῖν γράμματα (letters? or the arts?), but speaks afterward of his regard for reading.

He then forsook the hamlet, and led an ascetic life in the neighborhood, praying constantly, according to the exhortation: “Pray without ceasing;” and also laboring, according to the maxim: “If any will not work, neither should he eat.” What he did not need for his slender support, he gave to the poor. He visited the neighboring ascetics, who were then already very plentiful in Egypt, to learn humbly and thankfully their several eminent virtues; from one, earnestness in prayer; from another, watchfulness; from a third, excellence in fasting; from a fourth, meekness; from all, love to Christ and to fellow men. Thus he made himself universally beloved, and came to be reverenced as a friend of God.

But to reach a still higher level of ascetic holiness, he retreated, after the year 285, further and further from the bosom and vicinity of the church, into solitude, and thus became the founder of an anchoretism strictly so called. At first he lived in a sepulchre; then for twenty years in the ruins of a castle; and last on Mount Colzim, some seven hours from the Red Sea, a three days’ journey east of the Nile, where an old cloister still preserves his name and memory.

In this solitude he prosecuted his ascetic practices with ever-increasing rigor. Their monotony was broken only by basket making, occasional visits, and battles with the devil. In fasting he attained a rare abstemiousness. His food consisted of bread and salt, sometimes dates; his drink, of water. Flesh and wine he never touched. He ate only once a day, generally after sunset, and, like the presbyter Isidore, was ashamed that an immortal spirit should need earthly nourishment. Often he fasted from two to five days. Friends, and wandering Saracens, who always had a certain reverence for the saints of the desert, brought him bread from time to time. But in the last years of his life, to render himself entirely independent of others, and to afford hospitality to travellers, he cultivated a small garden on the mountain, near a spring shaded by palms.

Jerome, in his Vita Hilarionis, c. 31, gives an incidental description of this last residence of Anthony, according to which it was not so desolate as from Athanasius one would infer. He speaks even of palms, fruit trees, and vines in this garden, the fruit of which any one would have enjoyed.

Conflicts with the devil and his hosts of demons were, as with other solitary saints, a prominent part of Anthony’s experience, and continued through all his life. The devil appeared to him in visions and dreams, or even in daylight, in all possible forms, now as a friend, now as a fascinating woman, now as a dragon, tempting him by reminding him of his former wealth, of his noble family, of the care due to his sister, by promises of wealth, honor, and renown, by exhibitions of the difficulty of virtue and the facility of vice, by unchaste thoughts and images, by terrible threatening of the dangers and punishments of the ascetic life. Once he struck the hermit so violently, Athanasius says, that a friend, who brought him bread, found him on the ground apparently dead. At another time he broke through the wall of his cave and filled the room with roaring lions, howling wolves, growling bears, fierce hyenas, crawling serpents and scorpions; but Anthony turned manfully toward the monsters, till a supernatural light broke in from the roof and dispersed them. His sermon, which he delivered to the hermits at their request, treats principally of these wars with demons, and gives also the key to the interpretation of them: “Fear not Satan and his angels. Christ has broken their power. The best weapon against them is faith and piety .... The presence of evil spirits reveals itself in perplexity, despondency, hatred of the ascetics, evil desires, fear of death .... They take the form answering to the spiritual state they find in us at the time.

Athanas. c. 42: Ἐλθόντες γὰρ (οἱ ἐχθροὶ) ὁποίους ἀν εὕρωσιν ἡμᾶς, τοιοῦτοι καὶ αὐτοὶ γίνονται, etc.—an important psychological observation.

Only in exceptional cases did Anthony leave his solitude; and then he made a powerful impression on both Christians and heathens with his hairy dress and his emaciated, ghostlike form. In the year 311, during the persecution under Maximinus, he appeared in Alexandria in the hope of himself gaining the martyr’s crown. He visited the confessors in the mines and prisons, encouraged them before the tribunal, accompanied them to the scaffold; but no one ventured to lay hands on the saint of the wilderness. In the year 351, when a hundred years old, he showed himself for the second and last time in the metropolis of Egypt, to bear witness for the orthodox faith of his friend Athanasius against Arianism, and in a few days converted more heathens and heretics than had otherwise been gained in a whole year. He declared the Arian denial of the divinity of Christ worse than the venom of the serpent, and no better than heathenism which worshipped the creature instead of the Creator. He would have nothing to do with heretics, and warned his disciples against intercourse with them. Athanasius attended him to the gate of the city, where he cast out an evil spirit from a girl. An invitation to stay longer in Alexandria he declined, saying: “As a fish out of water, so a monk out of his solitude dies.” Imitating his example, the monks afterward forsook the wilderness in swarms whenever orthodoxy was in danger, and went in long processions with wax tapers and responsive singing through the streets, or appeared at the councils, to contend for the orthodox faith with all the energy of fanaticism, often even with physical force.

Though Anthony shunned the society of men, yet he was frequently visited in his solitude and resorted to for consolation and aid by Christians and heathens, by ascetics, sick, and needy, as a heaven-descended physician of Egypt for body and soul. He enjoined prayer, labor, and care of the poor, exhorted those at strife to the love of God, and healed the sick and demoniac with his prayer. Athanasius relates several miracles performed by him, the truth of which we leave undecided though they are far less incredible and absurd than many other monkish stories of that age. Anthony, his biographer assures us, never boasted when his prayer was heard, nor murmured when it was not, but in either case thanked God. He cautioned monks against overrating the gift of miracles, since it is not our work, but the grace of the Lord; and he reminds them of the word: “Rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” To Martianus, an officer, who urgently besought him to heal his possessed daughter, he said: “Man, why dost thou call on me? I am a man, as thou art. If thou believest, pray to God, and he will hear thee.” Martianus prayed, and on his return found his daughter whole.

Anthony distinguished himself above most of his countless disciples and successors, by his fresh originality of mind. Though uneducated and limited, he had sound sense and ready mother wit. Many of his striking answers and felicitous sentences have come down to us. When some heathen philosophers once visited him, he asked them: “Why do you give yourselves so much trouble to see a fool?” They explained, perhaps ironically, that they took him rather for a wise man. He replied: “If you take me for a fool, your labor is lost; but if I am a wise man, you should imitate me, and be Christians, as I am.” At another time, when taunted with his ignorance, he asked: “Which is older and better, mind or learning?” The mind, was the answer. “Then,” said the hermit, “the mind can do without learning.” “My book,” he remarked on a similar occasion, “is the whole creation, which lies open before me, and in which I can read the word of God as often as I will.” The blind church-teacher, Didymus, whom he met in Alexandria, he comforted with the words: “Trouble not thyself for the loss of the outward eye, with which even flies see; but rejoice in the possession of the spiritual eye, with which also angels behold the face of God, and receive his light.”

This is not told indeed by Athanasius, but by Rufinus, Jerome, and Socrates (Hist. Eccl. iv. 25). Comp. Tillemont, l.c. p. 129.

During the last years of his life the patriarch of monasticism withdrew as much as possible from the sight of visitors, but allowed two disciples to live with him, and to take care of him in his infirm old age. When he felt his end approaching, he commanded them not to embalm his body, according to the Egyptian custom, but to bury it in the earth, and to keep the spot of his interment secret. One of his two sheepskins he bequeathed to the bishop Serapion, the other, with his underclothing, to Athanasius, who had once given it to him new, and now received it back worn out. What became of the robe woven from palm leaves, which, according to Jerome, he had inherited from Paul of Thebes, and wore at Easter and Pentecost, Athanasius does not tell us. After this disposition of his property, Anthony said to his disciples: “Children, farewell; for Anthony goes away, and will be no more with you.” With these words he stretched out his feet and expired with a smiling face, in the year 356, a hundred and five years old. His grave remained for centuries unknown. His last will was thus a protest against the worship of saints and relics, which, however, it nevertheless greatly helped to promote. Under Justinian, in 561, his bones, as the Bollandists and Butler minutely relate, were miraculously discovered, brought to Alexandria, then to Constantinople, and at last to Vienne in South France, and in the eleventh century, during the raging of an epidemic disease, the so-called “holy fire,” or “St. Anthony’s fire,” they are said to have performed great wonders.

Athanasius, the greatest man of the Nicene age, concludes his biography of his friend with this sketch of his character: “From this short narrative you may judge how great a man Anthony was, who persevered in the ascetic life from youth to the highest age. In his advanced age he never allowed himself better food, nor change of raiment, nor did he even wash his feet. Yet he continued healthy in all his parts. His eyesight was clear to the end, and his teeth sound, though by long use worn to mere stumps. He retained also the perfect use of his hands and feet, and was more robust and vigorous than those who are accustomed to change of food and clothing and to washing. His fame spread from his remote dwelling on the lone mountain over the whole Roman empire. What gave him his renown, was not learning nor worldly wisdom, nor human art, but alone his piety toward God .... And let all the brethren know, that the Lord will not only take holy monks to heaven, but give them celebrity in all the earth, however deep they may bury themselves in the wilderness.”

The whole Nicene age venerated in Anthony a model saint.

Comp. the proofs in Tillemont, l.c. p. 137 sq.

§ 36. Spread of Anchoretism. Hilarion.

The example of Anthony acted like magic upon his generation, and his biography by Athanasius, which was soon translated also into Latin, was a tract for the times. Chrysostom recommended it to all as instructive and edifying reading.

Hom. viii. in Matth. tom. vii. 128 (ed. Montfaucon).

In a short time, still in the lifetime of Anthony, the deserts of Egypt, from Nitria, south of Alexandria, and the wilderness of Scetis, to Libya and the Thebaid, were peopled with anchorets and studded with cells. A mania for monasticism possessed Christendom, and seized the people of all classes like an epidemic. As martyrdom had formerly been, so now monasticism was, the quickest and surest way to renown upon earth and to eternal reward in heaven. This prospect, with which Athanasius concludes his life of Anthony, abundantly recompensed all self-denial and mightily stimulated pious ambition. The consistent recluse must continually increase his seclusion. No desert was too scorching, no rock too forbidding, no cliff too steep, no cave too dismal for the feet of these world-hating and man-shunning enthusiasts. Nothing was more common than to see from two to five hundred monks under the same abbot. It has been supposed, that in Egypt the number of anchorets and cenobites equalled the population of the cities.

“Quanti populi,” says Rufinus (Vitae Patr. ii c. 7), “habentur in urbibus, tantae paene habentur in desertis multitudines monachorum.” Gibbon adds the sarcastic remark: “Posterity might repeat the saying, which had formerly been applied to sacred animals of the same country, That in Egypt it was less difficult to find a god than a man.” Montalembert (Monks of the West, vol. i. p. 314) says of the increase of monks: “Nothing in the wonderful history of these hermits in Egypt is so incredible as their number. But the most weighty authorities agreed in establishing it (S. Augustine, De morib. Eccles. i. 31). It was a kind of emigration of towns to the desert, of civilization to simplicity, of noise to silence, of corruption to innocence. The current once begun, floods of men, of women, and of children threw themselves into it, and flowed thither during a century with irresistible force.”

The elder Macarius

There were several (five or seven) anchorets of this name, who are often confounded. The most celebrated are Macarius the elder, or the Great († 390), to whom the Homilies probably belong; and Macarius the younger, of Alexandria († 404), the teacher of Palladius, who spent a long time with him, and set him as high as the other. Comp. Tillemont’s extended account, tom. viii. p. 574-650, and the notes, p. 811 sqq.

From Egypt the solitary life spread to the neighboring countries.

Hilarion, whose life Jerome has written graphically and at large,

Opera, tom. ii. p. 13-40.

§ 37. St. Symeon and the Pillar Saints.

Respecting St. Symeon, or Simeon Stylites, we have accounts from three contemporaries and eye witnesses, Anthony, Cosmas, and especially Theodoret (Hist. Relig. c. 26). The latter composed his narrative sixteen years before the death the saint.

Evagrius: H. E. i. c. 13. The Acta Sanctorum and Butler, sub Jan. 5. Uhlemann: Symeon, der erste Säulenheilige in Syrien. Leipz. 1846. (Comp. also the fine poem of A. Tennyson: St. Symeon Stylites, a monologue in which S. relates his own experience.)

It is unnecessary to recount the lives of other such anchorets; since the same features, even to unimportant details, repeat themselves in all.

A peculiar, romantic, but not fully historical interest attaches to the biography of the imprisoned and fortunately escaping monk Malchus, with his nominal wife, which is preserved to us by Jerome.

St. Symeon the Stylite, originally a shepherd on the borders of Syria and Cilicia, when a boy of thirteen years, was powerfully affected by the beatitudes, which he heard read in the church, and betook himself to a cloister. He lay several days, without eating or drinking, before the threshold, and begged to be admitted as the meanest servant of the house. He accustomed himself to eat only once a week, on Sunday. During Lent he even went through the whole forty days without any food; a fact almost incredible even for a tropical climate.

Butler, l.c., however, relates something similar of a contemporary Benedictine monk, Dom Claude Leante: “In 1731, when he was about fifty-one years of age, he had fasted eleven years without taking any food the whole forty days, except what he daily took at mass; and what added to the wonder is, that during Lent he did not properly sleep, but only dozed. He could not bear the open air; and toward the end of Lent he was excessively pale and wasted. This fact is attested by his brethren and superiors, in a relation printed at Sens, in 1731.”

Yet Symeon was not only concerned about his own salvation. People streamed from afar to witness this standing wonder of the age. He spoke to all classes with the same friendliness, mildness, and love; only women he never suffered to come within the wall which surrounded his pillar. From this original pulpit, as a mediator between heaven and earth, he preached repentance twice a day to the astonished spectators, settled controversies, vindicated the orthodox faith, extorted laws even from an emperor, healed the sick wrought miracles, and converted thousands of heathen Ishmaelites, Iberians, Armenians, and Persians to Christianity, or at least to the Christian name. All this the celebrated Theodoret relates as an eyewitness during the lifetime of the saint. He terms him the great wonder of the world,

Τὸ μέγα θαῦμα τῆς οἰκουμένης. Hist. Relig. c. 26, at the beginning.

He died in 459, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, of a long-concealed and loathsome ulcer on his leg; and his body was brought in solemn procession to the metropolitan church Of Antioch.

Even before his death, Symeon enjoyed the unbounded admiration of Christians and heathens, of the common people, of the kings of Persia, and of the emperors Theodosius II., Leo, and Marcian, who begged his blessing and his counsel. No wonder, that, with all his renowned humility, he had to struggle with the temptations of spiritual pride. Once an angel appeared to him in a vision, with a chariot of fire, to convey him, like Elijah, to heaven, because the blessed spirits longed for him. He was already stepping into the chariot with his right foot, which on this occasion he sprained (as Jacob his thigh), when the phantom of Satan was chased away by the sign of the cross. Perhaps this incident, which the Acta Sanctorum gives, was afterward invented, to account for his sore, and to illustrate the danger of self-conceit. Hence also the pious monk Nilus, with good reason, reminded the ostentatious pillar saints of the proverb: “He that exalteth himself shall be abased.”

Ep. ii. 114; cited in Gieseler, ii. 2, p. 246, note 47 (Edinb. Engl. ed. ii. p. 13, note 47), and in Neander.

Of the later stylites the most distinguished were Daniel († 490), in the vicinity of Constantinople, and Symeon the younger († 592), in Syria. The latter is said to have spent sixty-eight years on a pillar. In the East this form of sanctity perpetuated itself, though only in exceptional cases, down to the twelfth century. The West, so far as we know, affords but one example of a stylite, who, according to Gregory of Tours, lived a long time on a pillar near Treves, but came down at the command of the bishop, and entered a neighboring cloister.

§ 38. Pachomius and the Cloister life.

On St. Pachomius we have a biography composed soon after his death by a monk of Tabennae, and scattered accounts in Palladius, Jerome (Regula Pachomii, Latine reddita, Opp. Hieron. ed. Vallarsi, tom. ii. p. 50 sqq.), Rufinus, Sozomen, &c. Comp. Tillemont, tom. vii. p. 167–235, and the Vit. Sanct. sub Maj. 14.

Though the strictly solitary life long continued in use, and to this day appears here and there in the Greek and Roman churches, yet from the middle of the fourth century monasticism began to assume in general the form of the cloister life, as incurring less risk, being available for both sexes, and being profitable to the church. Anthony himself gave warning, as we have already observed, against the danger of entire isolation, by referring to the proverb: “Woe to him that is alone.” To many of the most eminent ascetics anchoretism was a stepping stone to the coenobite life; to others it was the goal of coenobitism, and the last and highest round on the ladder of perfection.

The founder of this social monachism was Pachomius, a contemporary of Anthony, like him an Egyptian, and little below him in renown among the ancients. He was born about 292, of heathen parents, in the Upper Thebaid, served as a soldier in the army of the tyrant Maximin on the expedition against Constantine and Licinius, and was, with his comrades, so kindly treated by the Christians at Thebes, that he was won to the Christian faith, and, after his discharge from the military service, received baptism. Then, in 313, he visited the aged hermit Palemon, to learn from him the way to perfection. The saint showed him the difficulties of the anchorite life: “Many,” said he, “have come hither from disgust with the world, and had no perseverance. Remember, my son, my food consists only of bread and salt; I drink no wine, take no oil, spend half the night awake, singing psalms and meditating on the Scriptures, and sometimes pass the whole night without sleep.” Pachomius was astounded, but not discouraged, and spent several years with this man as a pupil.

In the year 325 he was directed by an angel, in a vision, to establish on the island of Tabennae, in the Nile, in Upper Egypt, a society of monks, which in a short time became so strong that even before his death (348) it numbered eight or nine cloisters in the Thebaid, and three thousand (according to some, seven thousand), and, a century later, fifty thousand members. The mode of life was fixed by a strict rule of Pachomius, which, according to a later legend, an angel communicated to him, and which Jerome translated into Latin. The formal reception into the society was preceded by a three-years’ probation. Rigid vows were not yet enjoined. With spiritual exercises manual labor was united, agriculture, boat building, basketmaking, mat and coverlet weaving, by which the monks not only earned their own living, but also supported the poor and the sick. They were divided, according to the grade of their ascetic piety, into four and twenty classes, named by the letters of the Greek alphabet. They lived three in a cell. They ate in common, but in strict silence, and with the face covered. They made known their wants by signs. The sick were treated with special care. On Saturday and Sunday they partook of the communion. Pachomius, as abbot, or archimandrite, took the oversight of the whole; each cloister having a separate superior and a steward.

Pachomius also established a cloister of nuns for his sister, whom he never admitted to his presence when she would visit him, sending her word that she should be content to know that he was still alive. In like manner, the sister of Anthony and the wife of Ammon became centres of female cloister life, which spread with great rapidity.

Pachomius, after his conversion never ate a full meal, and for fifteen years slept sitting on a stone. Tradition ascribes to him all sorts of miracles, even the gift of tongues and perfect dominion over nature, so that he trod without harm on serpents and scorpions, and crossed the Nile on the backs of crocodiles!

Möhler remarks on this (Vermischte Schriften, ii. p. 183): “Thus antiquity expresses its faith, that for man perfectly reconciled with God there is no enemy in nature. There is more than poetry here; there is expressed at least the high opinion his own and future generations had of Pachomius.” The last qualifying remark suggests a doubt even in the mind of this famous modern champion of Romanism as to the real historical character of the wonderful tales of this monastic saint.

From Egypt the cloister life spread with the rapidity of the irresistible spirit of the age, over the entire Christian East. The most eminent fathers of the Greek church were either themselves monks for a time, or at all events friends and patrons of monasticism. Ephraim propagated it in Mesopotamia; Eustathius of Sebaste in Armenia and Paphlagonia; Basil the Great in Pontus and Cappadocia. The latter provided his monasteries and nunneries with clergy, and gave them an improved rule, which, before his death (379), was accepted by some eighty thousand monks, and translated by Rufinus into Latin. He sought to unite the virtues of the anchorite and coenobite life, and to make the institution useful to the church by promoting the education of youth, and also (as Athanasius designed before him) by combating Arianism among the people.

Gregory Nazianzen, in his eulogy on Basil (Orat. xx. of the old order, Orat. xliii. in the new Par. ed.), gives him the honor of endeavoring to unite the theoretical and the practical modes of life in monasticism, ἲνα μήτε τὸ φιλόσοφον ἀκοινώνητον ᾗ, μήτε τὸ πρακτικὸν ἀφιλόσοφον.

In the beginning of the fifth century, Eastern monasticism was most worthily represented by the elder Nilus of Sinai, a pupil and venerator of Chrysostom, and a copious ascetic writer, who retired with his son from a high civil office in Constantinople to Mount Sinai, while his wife, with a daughter, travelled to an Egyptian cloister;

Comp. Neander, iii. 487 (Torrey’s translation, vol. ii. p. 250 sqq.), who esteems Nilus highly; and the article of Gass in Herzog’s Theol. Encykl. vol. x. p, 355 sqq. His works are in the Bibl. Max. vet. Patr. tom. vii., and in Migne’s Patrol. Gr. t. 79.

§ 39. Fanatical and Heretical Monastic Societies in The East.

Acta Concil. Gangrenensis, in Mansi, ii. 1095 sqq. Epiphan.: Haer. 70, 75 and 80. Socr.: H. E. ii. 43. Sozom.: iv. 24. Theodor.: H. E. iv. 9, 10; Fab. haer. iv. 10, 11. Comp. Neander: iii. p. 468 sqq. (ed. Torrey, ii. 238 sqq.).

Monasticism generally adhered closely to the orthodox faith of the church. The friendship between Athanasius, the father of orthodoxy, and Anthony, the father of monachism, is on this point a classical fact. But Nestorianism also, and Eutychianism, Monophysitism, Pelagianism, and other heresies, proceeded from monks, and found in monks their most vigorous advocates. And the monastic enthusiasm ran also into ascetic heresies of its own, which we must notice here.

1. The Eustathians, so named from Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste and friend of Basil, founder of monasticism in Armenia, Pontus, and Paphlagonia. This sect asserted that marriage debarred from salvation and incapacitated for the clerical office. For this and other extravagances it was condemned by a council at Gangra in Paphlagonia (between 360 and 370), and gradually died out.

2. The Audians held similar principles. Their founder, Audius, or Udo, a layman of Syria, charged the clergy of his day with immorality, especially avarice and extravagance. After much persecution, which he bore patiently, he forsook the church, with his friends, among whom were some bishops and priests, and, about 330, founded a rigid monastic sect in Scythia, which subsisted perhaps a hundred years. They were Quartodecimans in the practice of Easter, observing it on the 14th of Nisan, according to Jewish fashion. Epiphanius speaks favorably of their exemplary but severely ascetic life.

3. The Euchites or Messalians,

From ןילִצְלִמַ = Εὐχίται–ϊ, –ͅϊ from εὐχη–ΐ,–ͅϊ prayer.

§ 40. Monasticism in the West. Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Martin of Tours.

I. Ambrosius: De Virginibus ad Marcellinam sororem suam libri tres, written about 377 (in the Benedictine edition of Ambr. Opera, tom. ii. p. 145–183). Augustinus (a.d. 400): De Opere Monachorum liber unus (in the Bened. ed., tom. vi. p. 476–504). Sulpitius Severus (about a.d. 403): Dialogi tres (de virtutibus monachorum orientalium et de virtutibus B. Martini); and De Vita Beati Martini (both in the Bibliotheca Maxima vet. Patrum, tom. vi. p. 349 sqq., and better in Gallandi’s Bibliotheca vet. Patrum, tom. viii. p. 392 sqq.).

II. J. Mabillon: Observat. de monachis in occidente ante Benedictum (Praef. in Acta Sanct. Ord. Bened.). R. H. Milman: Hist. of Latin Christianity, Lond. 1854, vol. i. ch. vi. p. 409–426: “Western Monasticism.” Count de Montalembert: The Monks of the West, Engl. translation, vol. i. p. 379 sqq.

In the Latin church, in virtue partly of the climate, partly of the national character,

Sulpitius Severus, in the first of his three dialogues, gives several amusing instances of the difference between the Gallic and Egyptian stomach, and was greatly astonished when the first Egyptian anchoret whom he visited placed before him and his four companions a half loaf of barley bread and a handful of herbs for a dinner, though they tasted very good after the wearisome journey. “Edacitas,” says he, “in Graecis gula est, in Gallia natura.” (Dial. i. c. 8, in Gallandi, t. viii. p. 405.)

Athanasius, the guest, the disciple, and subsequently the biographer and eulogist of St. Anthony, brought the first intelligence of monasticism to the West, and astounded the civilized and effeminate Romans with two live representatives of the semi-barbarous desert-sanctity of Egypt, who accompanied him in his exile in 340. The one, Ammonius, was so abstracted from the world that he disdained to visit any of the wonders of the great city, except the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul; while the other, Isidore, attracted attention by his amiable simplicity. The phenomenon excited at first disgust and contempt, but soon admiration and imitation, especially among women, and among the decimated ranks of the ancient Roman nobility. The impression of the first visit was afterward strengthened by two other visits of Athanasius to Rome, and especially by his biography of Anthony, which immediately acquired the popularity and authority of a monastic gospel. Many went to Egypt and Palestine, to devote themselves there to the new mode of life; and for the sake of such, Jerome afterward translated the rule of Pachomius into Latin. Others founded cloisters in the neighborhood of Rome, or on the ruins of the ancient temples and the forum, and the frugal number of the heathen vestals was soon cast into the shade by whole hosts of Christian virgins. From Rome, monasticism gradually spread over all Italy and the isles of the Mediterranean, even to the rugged rocks of the Gorgon and the Capraja, where the hermits, in voluntary exile from the world, took the place of the criminals and political victims whom the justice or tyranny and jealousy of the emperors had been accustomed to banish thither.

Ambrose, whose sister, Marcellina, was among the first Roman nuns, established a monastery in Milan,

Augustine, Conf. vii. 6: “Erat monasterium Mediolani plenum bonis fratribus extra urbis moenia, sub Ambrosio nutritore.”

Augustine, whose evangelical principles of the free grace of God as the only ground of salvation and peace were essentially inconsistent with the more Pelagian theory of the monastic life, nevertheless went with the then reigning spirit of the church in this respect, and led, with his clergy, a monk-like life in voluntary poverty and celibacy,

He himself speaks of a monasterium clericorum in his episcopal residence, and his biographer, Possidius, says of him, Vita, c. 5: “Factus ergo presbyter monasterium inter ecclesiam mox instituit, et cum Dei servis vivere coepit secundum modum, et regulam sub sanctis apostlis constitutam, maxime ut nemo quidquam proprium haberet, sed eis essent omnia communia.”

Monasticism was planted in Gaul by Martin of Tours, whose life and miracles were described in fluent, pleasing language by his disciple, Sulpitius Severus,

In his Vita Martini, and also in three letters respecting him, and in three very eloquently and elegantly written dialogues, the first of which relates to the oriental monks, the two others to the miracles of Martin (translated, with some omissions, in Ruffner’s Fathers of the Desert, vol. ii. p. 68-178). He tells us (Dial. i. c. 23) that the book traders of Rome sold his Vita Martini more rapidly than any other book, and made great profit on it. The Acts of the Saints were read as romances in those days.

In Southern Gaul, monasticism spread with equal rapidity. John Cassian, an ascetic writer and a Semipelagian († 432), founded two cloisters in Massilia (Marseilles), where literary studies also were carried on; and Honoratus (after 426, bishop of Arles) established the cloister of St. Honoratus on the island of Lerina.

§ 41. St. Jerome as a Monk.

S. Eus. Hieronymi: Opera omnia, ed. Erasmus (assisted by Oecolampadius), Bas. 1516–’20, 9 vols. fol.; ed. (Bened.) Martianay, Par. 1693–1706, 5 vols. fol. (incomplete); ed. Vallarsi and Maffei, Veron. 1734–’42, 11 vols. fol., also Venet. 1766 (best edition). Comp. especially the 150 Epistles, often separately edited (the chronological order of which Vallarsi, in tom. i. of his edition, has finally established).

For extended works on the life of Jerome see Du Pin (Nouvelle Biblioth. des auteurs Eccles. tom. iii. p. 100–140); Tillemont (tom. xii. 1–356); Martianay (La vie de St. Jerôme, Par. 1706); Joh. Stilting (in the Acta Sanctorum, Sept. tom. viii. p. 418–688, Antw. 1762); Butler (sub Sept. 30); Vallarsi (in Op. Hieron., tom. xi. p. 1–240); Schröckh (viii. 359 sqq., and especially xi. 3–254); Engelstoft (Hieron. Stridonensis, interpres, criticus, exegeta, apologeta, historicus, doctor, monachus, Havn. 1798); D. v. Cölln (in Ersch and Gruber’s Encycl. sect. ii. vol. 8); Collombet (Histoire de S. Jérôme, Lyons, 1844); and O. Zöckler (Hieronymus, sein Leben und Wirken. Gotha, 1865).

The most zealous promoter of the monastic life among the church fathers was Jerome, the connecting link between Eastern and Western learning and religion. His life belongs almost with equal right to the history of theology and the history of monasticism. Hence the church art generally represents him as a penitent in a reading or writing posture, with a lion and a skull, to denote the union of the literary and anchoretic modes of life. He was the first learned divine who not only recommended but actually embraced the monastic mode of life, and his example exerted a great influence in making monasticism available for the promotion of learning. To rare talents and attainments,

As he himself boasts in his second apology to Rufinus: “Ego philosophus(?), rhetor, grammaticus, dialecticus, hebraeus, graecus, latinus, trilinguis.” The celebrated Erasmus, the first editor of his works, and a very competent judge in matters of literary talent and merit, places Jeromeabove all the fathers, even St. Augustine(with whose doctrines of free grace and predestination he could not sympathize), and often gives eloquent expression to his admiration for him. In a letter to Pope Leo X. (Ep. ii. 1, quoted in Vallarsi’s ed. of Jerome’s works, tom. xi. 290), he says: “Divus Hieronymus sic apud Latinos est theologorum princeps, ut hunc prope solum habeamus theologi dignum nomine. Non quod caeteros damnem, sed quod illustres alioqui, si cum hoc conferantur, ob huius eminentiam velut obscurentur. Denique tot egregiis est cumulatus dotibus, ut vix ullum habeat et ipsa docta Graecia, quem cum hoc viro quest componere. Quantum in illo Romanae facundiae! quanta linguarum peritia! quanta omnis antiquitatis omnium historiarum notitia! quam fida memoria! quam felix rerum omnium mixtum! quam absoluta mysticarum literarum cognitio! super omnia, quis ardor ille, quam admirabilis divini pectoris afflatus? ut una et plurimum delectet eloquentia, et doceat eruditione, et rapiat sanctimonia.”

Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus was born at Stridon,

Hence called Stridonensis; also in distinction from the contemporary but little known Greek Jerome, who was probably a presbyter in Jerusalem.

About the year 370, whether before or after his literary tour to Treves and Aquileia is uncertain, but at all events in his later youth, he received baptism at Rome and resolved thenceforth to devote himself wholly, in rigid abstinence, to the service of the Lord. In the first zeal of his conversion he renounced his love for the classics, and applied himself to the study of the hitherto distasteful Bible. In a morbid ascetic frame, he had, a few years later, that celebrated dream, in which he was summoned before the judgment seat of Christ, and as a heathen Ciceronian,

“Mentiris,” said the Lord to him, when Jeromecalled himself a Christian, Ciceronianus es, non Christianus, ubi enim thesaurus tuus ibi et cor tuum.” Ep. xxii. ad Eustochium, “De custodia virginitatis ”(tom. i. p. 113). C. A. Heumann has written a special treatise, De ecstasi Hieronymi anti-Ciceroniana. Comp. also Schröckh, vol. vii. p. 35 sqq., and Ozanam: ” Civilisation au 5e Siècle,” i. 301.

After his baptism, Jerome divided his life between the East and the West, between ascetic discipline and literary labor. He removed from Rome to Antioch with a few friends and his library, visited the most celebrated anchorets, attended the exegetical lectures of the younger Apollinaris in Antioch, and then (374) spent some time as an ascetic in the dreary Syrian desert of Chalcis. Here, like so many other hermits, he underwent a grevious struggle with sensuality, which he described ten years after with indelicate minuteness in a long letter to his virgin friend Eustochium.

Ep. xxii. (i. p. 91, ed. Vallars.)

The active and restless spirit of Jerome soon brought him again upon the public stage, and involved him in all the doctrinal and ecclesiastical controversies of those controversial times. He received the ordination of presbyter from the bishop Paulinus in Antioch, without taking charge of a congregation. He preferred the itinerant life of a monk and a student to a fixed office, and about 380 journeyed to Constantinople, where he heard the anti-Arian sermons of the celebrated Gregory Nazianzen, and translated the Chronicle of Eusebius and the homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In 382, on account of the Meletian schism, he returned to Rome with Paulinus and Epiphanius. Here he came into close connection with the bishop, Damasus, as his theological adviser and ecclesiastical secretary,

As we infer from a remark of Jeromein Ep. cxxiii. c. 10, written a. 409 (ed. Vallars. i. p. 901): “Ante annos plurimos, quum in chartis ecclesiasticis” (i.e. probably in ecclesiastical documents; though Schröckh, viii. p. 122, refers it to the Holy Scriptures, appealing to a work of Bonamici unknown to me), “juvarem Damasum, Romanae urbis episcopum, et orientis atque occidentis synodicis consultationibus responderem,” etc. The latter words, which Schröckh does not quote, favor the common interpretation.

At the same time he labored in Rome with the greatest zeal, by mouth and pen, in the cause of monasticism, which had hitherto gained very little foothold there, and met with violent opposition even among the clergy. He had his eye mainly upon the most wealthy and honorable classes of the decayed Roman society, and tried to induce the descendants of the Scipios, the Gracchi, the Marcelli, the Camilli, the Anicii to turn their sumptuous villas into monastic retreats, and to lead a life of self-sacrifice and charity. He met with great success. “The old patrician races, which founded Rome, which had governed her during all her period of splendor and liberty, and which overcame and conquered the world, had expiated for four centuries, under the atrocious yoke of the Caesars, all that was most hard and selfish in the glory of their fathers. Cruelly humiliated, disgraced, and decimated during that long servitude, by the masters whom degenerate Rome had given herself, they found at last in Christian life, such as was practised by the monks, the dignity of sacrifice and the emancipation of the soul. These sons of the old Romans threw themselves into it with the magnanimous fire and persevering energy which had gained for their ancestors the empire of the world. ’Formerly,’ says St. Jerome, ’according to the testimony of the apostles, there were few rich, few noble, few powerful among the Christians. Now it is no longer so. Not only among the Christians, but among the monks are to be found a multitude of the wise, the noble, and the rich.’... The monastic institution offered them a field of battle where the struggles and victories of their ancestors could be renewed and surpassed for a loftier cause, and over enemies more redoubtable. The great men whose memory hovered still over degenerate Rome had contended only with men, and subjugated only their bodies; their descendants undertook to strive with devils, and to conquer souls .... God called them to be the ancestors of a new people, gave them a new empire to found, and permitted them to bury and transfigure the glory of their forefathers in the bosom of the spiritual regeneration of the world.”

Montalembert, himself the scion of an old noble family in France, l.c. i. p. 388 sq. Comp. Hieron., Epist. lxvi. ad Pammachium, de obit. Paulinae (ed. Vallars. i. 391 sqq.).

Most of these distinguished patrician converts of Jerome were women—such widows as Marcella, Albinia, Furia, Salvina, Fabiola, Melania, and the most illustrious of all, Paula, and her family; or virgins, as Eustochium, Apella, Marcellina, Asella, Felicitas, and Demetrias. He gathered them as a select circle around him; he expounded to them the Holy Scriptures, in which some of these Roman ladies were very well read; he answered their questions of conscience; he incited them to celibate life, lavish beneficence, and enthusiastic asceticism; and flattered their spiritual vanity by extravagant praises. He was the oracle, biographer, admirer, and eulogist of these holy women, who constituted the spiritual nobility of Catholic Rome. Even the senator Pammachius, son in-law to Paula and heir to her fortune, gave his goods to the poor, exchanged the purple for the cowl, exposed himself to the mockery of his colleagues, and became, in the flattering language of Jerome, the general in chief of Roman monks, the first of monks in the first of cities.

In one of his Epist. ad Pammach.: “Primus inter monachos in prima urbe ... archistrategos monachorum.”

His intimacy with these distinguished women, whom he admired more, perhaps, than they admired him, together with his unsparing attacks upon the immoralities of the Roman clergy and of the higher classes, drew upon him much unjust censure and groundless calumny, which he met rather with indignant scorn and satire than with quiet dignity and Christian meekness. After the death of his patron Damasus, a.d. 384, he left Rome, and in August, 385, with his brother Paulinian, a few monks, Paula, and her daughter Eustochium, made a pilgrimage “from Babylon to Jerusalem, that not Nebuchadnezzar, but Jesus, should reign over him.” With religious devotion and inquiring mind he wandered through the holy places of Palestine, spent some time in Alexandria, where he heard the lectures of the celebrated Didymus; visited the cells of the Nitrian mountain; and finally, with his two female friends, in 386, settled in the birthplace of the Redeemer, to lament there, as he says, the sins of his youth, and to secure himself against others.

In Bethlehem he presided over a monastery till his death, built a hospital for all strangers except heretics, prosecuted his literary studies without cessation, wrote several commentaries, and finished his improved Latin version of the Bible—the noblest monument of his life—but entangled himself in violent literary controversies, not only with opponents of the church orthodoxy like Helvidius (against whom he had appeared before, in 384), Jovinian, Vigilantius, and Pelagius, but also with his long-tried friend Rufinus, and even with Augustine.

His controversy with Augustineon the interpretation of Gal. ii. 14 is not unimportant as an index of the moral character of the two most illustrous Latin fathers of the church. Jeromesaw in the account of the collision between Paul and Peter, in Antioch, an artifice of pastoral prudence, and supposed that Paul did not there reprove the senior apostle in earnest, but only for effect, to reclaim the Jews from their wrong notions respecting the validity of the ceremonial law. Augustine’s delicate sense of truth was justly offended by this exegesis, which, to save the dignity of Peter, ascribed falsehood to Paul, and he expressed his opinion to Jerome, who, however, very loftily made him feel his smaller grammatical knowledge. But they afterward became reconciled. Comp. on this dispute the letters on both sides, in Hieron. Opera, ed. Vall. tom. i. 632 sqq., and the treatise of Möhler, in his ”Vermischte Schriften,” vol. i. p. 1-18.

The Roman church has long since assigned him one of the first places among her standard teachers and canonical saints. Yet even some impartial Catholic historians venture to admit and disapprove his glaring inconsistencies and violent passions. The Protestant love of truth inclines to the judgment, that Jerome was indeed an accomplished and most serviceable scholar and a zealous enthusiast for all which his age counted holy, but lacking in calm self-control and proper depth of mind and character, and that he reflected, with the virtues, the failings also of his age and of the monastic system. It must be said to his credit, however, that with all his enthusiastic zeal and admiration for monasticism, he saw with a keen eye and exposed with unsparing hand the false monks and nuns, and painted in lively colors the dangers of melancholy, hypochondria, the hypocrisy and spiritual pride, to which the institution was exposed.

Most Roman Catholic biographers, as Martianay, Vallarsi, Stilting, Dolci, and even the Anglican Cave, are unqualified eulogists of Jerome. See also the “Selecta Veterum testimonia de Hieronymo ejusque scriptis,” in Vallarsi’s edition, tom. xi. pp. 282-300. Tillemont, however, who on account of his Jansenist proclivity sympathizes more with Augustine, makes a move toward a more enlightened judgment, for which Stilting sharply reproves him. Montalembert (l.c. i. 402) praises him as a man of genius, inspired by zeal and subdued by penitence, of ardent faith and immense resources of knowledge; yet he incidentally speaks also of his “almost savage impetuosity of temper,” and “that inexhaustible vehemence which sometimes degenerated into emphasis and affectation.” Dr. John H. Newman, in his opinion before his transition from Puseyism to Romanism, exhibits the conflict in which the moral feeling is here involved with the authority of the Roman Church: “I do not scruple to say, that, were he not a saint, there are things in his writings and views from which I should shrink; but as the case stands, I shrink rather from putting myself in opposition to something like a judgment of the catholic(?) world in favor of his saintly perfection.” (Church of the Fathers, 263, cited by Robertson.) Luther also here boldly broke through tradition, but, forgetful of the great value of the Vulgate even to his German version of the Bible, went to the opposite extreme of unjust derogation, expressing several times a distinct antipathy to this church father, and charging him with knowing not how to write at all of Christ, but only of fasts, virginity, and useless monkish exercises. Le Clerc exposed his defects with thorough ability, but unfairly, in his ”Quaestiones Hieronymianae“ (Amstel. 1700, over 500 pages). Mosheim and Schröckh are more mild, but the latter considers it doubtful whether Jeromedid Christianity more good than harm. Among later Protestant historians opinion has become somewhat more favorable, though rather to his learning than to his moral character, which betrays in his letters and controversial writings too many unquestionable weaknesses.

§ 42. St. Paula.

Hieronymus: Epitaphium Paulae matris, ad Eustochium virginem, Ep. cviii. (ed. Vallarsi, Opera, tom. i. p. 684 sqq.; ed. Bened. Ep. lxxxvi). Also the Acta Sanctorum, and Butler’s Lives of Saints, sub Jan. 26.

Of Jerome’s many female disciples, the most distinguished is St. Paula, the model of a Roman Catholic nun. With his accustomed extravagance, he opens his eulogy after her death, in. 404, with these words: “If all the members of my body were turned into tongues, and all my joints were to utter human voices, I should be unable to say anything worthy of the holy and venerable Paula.”

She was born in 347, of the renowned stock of the Scipios and Gracchi and Paulus Aemilius,

Her father professed to trace his genealogy to Agamemnon, and her husband to Aeneas.

Repressing the sacred feelings of a mother, she left her daughter Ruffina and her little son Toxotius, in spite of their prayers and tears, in the city, of Rome,

“Nesciebat se matrem,” says Jerome, “ut Christi probaret ancillam.” Revealing the conflict of monastic sanctity with the natural virtues which God has enjoined. Montalembert, also, quotes this objectionable passage with apparent approbation.

She denied herself flesh and wine, performed, with her daughter Eustochium, the meanest services, and even in sickness slept on the bare ground in a hair shirt, or spent the whole night in prayer. “I must,” said she, “disfigure my face, which I have often, against the command of God, adorned with paint; torment the body, which has participated in many idolatries; and atone for long laughing by constant weeping.” Her liberality knew no bounds. She wished to die in beggary, and to be buried in a shroud which did not belong to her. She left to her daughter (she died in 419) a multitude of debts, which she had contracted at a high rate of interest for benevolent purposes.

Jeromesays, Eustochium hoped to pay the debts of her mother—probably by the help of others. Fuller justly remarks: “Liberality should have banks, as well as a stream.”

Her obsequies, which lasted a week, were attended by the bishops of Jerusalem and other cities of Palestine, besides clergy, monks, nuns, and laymen innumerable. Jerome apostrophizes her: “Farewell, Paula, and help with prayer the old age of thy adorer!”

§ 43. Benedict of Nursia.

Gregorius M.: Dialogorum, l. iv. (composed about 594; lib. ii. contains the biography of St. Benedict according to the communications of four abbots and disciples of the saint, Constantine, Honoratus, Valentinian, and Simplicius, but full of surprising miracles). Mabillon and other writers of the Benedictine congregation of St. Maurus: Acta Sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti in saeculorum classes distributa, fol. Par. 1668–1701, 9 vols. (to the year 1100), and Annales ordinis S. Bened. Par. 1703–’39, 6 vols. fol. (to 1157). Dom (Domnus) Jos. De Mège: Vie de St. Benoit, Par. 1690. The Acta Sanctorum, and Butler, sub Mart. 21. Montalembert: The Monks of the West, vol. ii. book iv.

Benedict of Nursia, the founder of the celebrated order which bears his name, gave to the Western monasticism a fixed and permanent form, and thus carried it far above the Eastern with its imperfect attempts at organization, and made it exceedingly profitable to the practical, and, incidentally, also to the literary interests of the Catholic Church. He holds, therefore, the dignity of patriarch of the Western monks. He has furnished a remarkable instance of the incalculable influence which a simple but judicious moral rule of life may exercise on many centuries.

Benedict was born of the illustrious house of Anicius, at Nursia (now Norcia) in Umbria, about the year 480, at the time when the political and social state of Europe was distracted and dismembered, and literature, morals, and religion seemed to be doomed to irremediable ruin. He studied in Rome, but so early as his fifteenth year he fled from the corrupt society of his fellow students, and spent three years in seclusion in a dark, narrow, and inaccessible grotto at Subiaco.

In Latin Sublaqueum, or Sublacum, in the States of the Church, over thirty English miles (Butler says “near forty,” Montalembert, ii. 7, “fifty miles”) east of Rome, on the Teverone. Butler describes the place as “a barren, hideous chain of rocks, with a river and lake in the valley.”

After this period of hermit life he began his labors in behalf of the monastery proper. In that mountainous region he established in succession twelve cloisters, each with twelve monks and a superior, himself holding the oversight of all. The persecution of an unworthy priest caused him, however, to leave Subiaco and retire to a wild but picturesque mountain district in the Neapolitan province, upon the boundaries of Samnium and Campania. There he destroyed the remnants of idolatry, converted many of the pagan inhabitants to Christianity by his preaching and miracles, and in the year 529, under many difficulties, founded upon the ruins of a temple of Apollo the renowned cloister of Monte Cassino,

Monasterium Cassinense. It was destroyed, indeed, by the Lombards, as early as 583, as Benedictis said to have predicted it would be, but was rebuilt in 731, consecrated in 748, again destroyed by the Saracens in 857, rebuilt about 950, and more completely, after many other calamities, in 1649, consecrated for the third time by BenedictXIII. in 1727, enriched and increased under the patronage of the emperors and popes, but in modern times despoiled of its enormous income (which at the end of the sixteenth century was reckoned at 500,000 ducats), and has stood through all vicissitudes to this day. In the days of its splendor, when the abbot was first baron of the kingdom of Naples, and commanded over four hundred towns and villages, it numbered several hundred monks, but in 1843 only twenty. It has a considerable library. Montalembert (l.c. ii. 19) calls Monte Cassino “the most powerful and celebrated monastery in the Catholic universe; celebrated especially because there Benedictwrote his rule and formed the type which was to serve as a model to innumerable communities submitted to that sovereign code.” He also quotes the poetic description from Dante’s Paradiso. Dom Luigi Tosti published at Naples, in 1842, a full history of this convent, in three volumes.

His credulous biographer, Pope Gregory I., in the second book of his Dialogues, ascribes to him miraculous prophecies and healings, and even a raising of the dead.

Gregor. Dial. ii. 37.

§ 45. The Benedictines. Cassiodorus.

Benedict had no presentiment of the vast historical importance, which this rule, originally designed simply for the cloister of Monte Cassino, was destined to attain. He probably never aspired beyond the regeneration and salvation of his own soul and that of his brother monks, and all the talk of later Catholic historians about his far-reaching plans of a political and social regeneration of Europe, and the preservation and promotion of literature and art, find no support whatever in his life or in his rule. But he humbly planted a seed, which Providence blessed a hundredfold. By his rule he became, without his own will or knowledge, the founder of an order, which, until in the thirteenth century the Dominicans and Franciscans pressed it partially into the background, spread with great rapidity over the whole of Europe, maintained a clear supremacy, formed the model for all other monastic orders, and gave to the Catholic church an imposing array of missionaries, authors, artists, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and popes, as Gregory the Great and Gregory VII. In less than a century after the death of Benedict, the conquests of the barbarians in Italy, Gaul, Spain were reconquered for civilization, and the vast territories of Great Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia incorporated into Christendom, or opened to missionary labor; and in this progress of history the monastic institution, regulated and organized by Benedict’s rule, bears an honorable share.

Benedict himself established a second cloister in the vicinity of Terracina, and two of his favorite disciples, Placidus and St. Maurus,

This Maurus, the founder of the abbacy of Glanfeuil (St. Maur sur Loire), is the patron saint of a branch of the Benedictines, the celebrated Maurians in France (dating from 1618), who so highly distinguished themselves in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, by their thorough archaeological and historical researches, and their superior editions of the Fathers. The most eminent of the Maurians are D. (Dom, equivalent to Domnus, Sir) Menard, d’Achery, Godin, Mabillon, le Nourry, Martianay, Ruinart, Martene, Montfaucon, Massuet, Garnier, and de la Rue, and in our time Dom Pitra, editor of a valuable collection of patristic fragments, at the cloister of Solesme.

The patronage of learning, however, as we have already said, was not within the design of the founder or his rule. The joining of this to the cloister life is duel if we leave out of view the learned monk Jerome, to Cassiodorus, who in 538 retired from the honors and cares of high civil office, in the Gothic monarchy of Italy,

He was the last of the Roman consuls—an office which Justinian abolished—and was successively the minister of Odoacer, Theodoric, and Athalaric, who made him prefect of the praetorium

The Benedictines, already accustomed to regular work, soon followed this example. Thus that very mode of life, which in its founder, Anthony, despised all learning, became in the course of its development an asylum of culture in the rough and stormy times of the migration and the crusades, and a conservator of the literary treasures of antiquity for the use of modern times.

§ 46. Opposition to Monasticism. Jovinian.

I. Chrysostomus: Πρὸς τοὺς πολεμοῦ́τας τοῖς ἐπὶ τὸ μονάζειν ἐνάγουσιν(a vindication of monasticism against its opponents, in three books). Hieronymus: Ep. 61, ad Vigilantium (ed. Vallars. tom. i. p. 345 sqq.); Ep. 109, ad Riparium (i. 719 sqq.); Adv. Helvidium (a.d. 383); Adv. Jovinianum (a.d. 392); Adv. Vigilantium (a.d. 406). All these three tracts are in Opera Hieron. tom. ii. p. 206–402. Augustinus: De haeres. cap. 82 (on Jovinian), and c. 84 (on Helvidius and the Helvidians). Epiphanius: Haeres. 75 (on Aerius).

II. Chr. W. F. Walch: Ketzerhistorie (1766), part iii. p. 585 (on Helvidius and the Antidikomarianites); p. 635 sqq. (on Jovinian); and p. 673 sqq. (on Vigilantius). Vogel: De Vigilantio haeretico orthodoxo, Gött. 1756. G. B. Lindner: De Joviniano et Vigilantio purioris doctrinae antesignanis, Lips. 1839. W. S. Gilly: Vigilantius and his Times, Lond. 1844. Comp. also Neander: Der heil. Joh. Chrysostomus, 3d ed. 1848, vol. i. p. 53 sqq.; and Kirchengesch, iii. p. 508 sqq. (Torrey’s translation, ii. p. 265 sqq.). Baur: Die christliche Kirche von 4–6ten Jahrh. 1859, p. 311 sqq.

Although monasticism was a mighty movement of the age, engaging either the cooperation or the admiration of the whole church, yet it was not exempt from opposition. And opposition sprang from very different quarters: now from zealous defenders of heathenism, like Julian and Libanius, who hated and bitterly reviled the monks for their fanatical opposition to temples and idol-worship; now from Christian statesmen and emperors, like Valens, who were enlisted against it by its withdrawing so much force from the civil and military service of the state, and, in the time of peril from the barbarians, encouraging idleness and passive contemplation instead of active, heroic virtue; now from friends of worldly indulgence, who found themselves unpleasantly disturbed and rebuked by the religious earnestness and zeal of the ascetic life; lastly, however, also from a liberal, almost protestant, conception of Christian morality, which set itself at the same time against the worship of Mary and the saints, and other abuses. This last form of opposition, however, existed mostly in isolated cases, was rather negative than positive in its character, lacked the spirit of wisdom and moderation, and hence almost entirely disappeared in the fifth century, only to be revived long after, in more mature and comprehensive form, when monasticism had fulfilled its mission for the world.

To this class of opponents belong Helvidius, Jovinian, Vigilantius, and Aerius. The first three are known to us through the passionate replies of Jerome, the last through the Panarion of Epiphanius. They figure in Catholic church history among the heretics, while they have received from many Protestant historians a place among the “witnesses of the truth” and the forerunners of the Reformation.

We begin with Jovinian, the most important among them, who is sometimes compared, for instance, even by Neander, to Luther, because, like Luther, he was carried by his own experience into reaction against the ascetic tendency and the doctrines connected with it. He wrote in Rome, before the year 390 a work, now lost, attacking monasticism in its ethical principles. He was at that time himself a monk, and probably remained so in a free way until his death. At all events he never married, and according to Augustine’s account, he abstained “for the present distress,”

1 Cor. vii. 26.

According to Jerome, Jovinian held these four points (1) Virgins, widows, and married persons, who have once been baptized into Christ, have equal merit, other things in their conduct being equal. (2) Those, who are once with full faith born again by baptism, cannot be overcome (subverti) by the devil. (3) There is no difference between abstaining from food and enjoying it with thanksgiving. (4) All, who keep the baptismal covenant, will receive an equal reward in heaven.

He insisted chiefly on the first point; so that Jerome devotes the whole first book of his refutation to this point, while he disposes of all the other heads in the second. In favor of the moral equality of married and single life, he appealed to Gen. ii. 24, where God himself institutes marriage before the fall; to Matt. xix. 5, where Christ sanctions it; to the patriarchs before and after the flood; to Moses and the prophets, Zacharias and Elizabeth, and the apostles, particularly Peter, who lived in wedlock; also to Paul, who himself exhorted to marriage,

1 Cor. vii. 36, 39.

Jovinian’s second point has an apparent affinity with the Augustinian and Calvinistic doctrine of the perseverantia sanctorum. It is not referred by him, however, to the eternal and unchangeable counsel of God, but simply based on 1 Jno. iii. 9, and v. 18, and is connected with his abstract conception of the opposite moral states. He limits the impossibility of relapse to the truly regenerate, who “plena fide in baptismate renati sunt,” and makes a distinction between the mere baptism of water and the baptism of the Spirit, which involves also a distinction between the actual and the ideal church.

His third point is aimed against the ascetic exaltation of fasting, with reference to Rom. xiv. 20, and 1 Tim. iv. 3. God, he holds, has created all animals for the service of man; Christ attended the marriage feast at Cana as a guest, sat at table with Zaccheus, with publicans and sinners, and was called by the Pharisees a glutton and a wine-bibber; and the apostle says: To the pure all things are pure, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.

He went still further, however, and, with the Stoics, denied all gradations of moral merit and demerit, consequently also all gradations of reward and punishment. He overlooked the process of development in both good and evil. He went back of all outward relations to the inner mind, and lost all subordinate differences of degree in the great contrast between true Christians and men of the world, between regenerate and unregenerate; whereas, the friends of monasticism taught a higher and lower morality, and distinguished the ascetics, as a special class, from the mass of ordinary Christians. As Christ, says he, dwells in believers, without difference of degree, so also believers are in Christ without difference of degree or stages of development. There are only two classes of men, righteous and wicked, sheep and goats, five wise virgins and five foolish, good trees with good fruit and bad trees with bad fruit. He appealed also to the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, who all received equal wages. Jerome answered him with such things as the parable of the sower and the different kinds of ground, the parable of the different numbers of talents with corresponding rewards, the many mansions in the Father’s house (by which Jovinian singularly understood the different churches on earth), the comparison of the resurrection bodies with the stars, which differ in glory, and the passage: “He which soweth sparingly, shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully, shall reap also bountifully.”

2 Cor. ix. 6.

§ 47. Helvidius, Vigilantius, and Aerius.

See especially the tracts of Jerome quoted in the preceding section.

Helvidius, whether a layman or a priest at Rome it is uncertain, a pupil, according to the statement of Gennadius, of the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan, wrote a work, before the year 383, in refutation of the perpetual virginity of the mother of the Lord—a leading point with the current glorification of celibacy. He considered the married state equal in honor and glory to that of virginity. Of his fortunes we know nothing. Augustine speaks of Helvidians, who are probably identical with the Antidicomarianites of Epiphanius. Jerome calls Helvidius, indeed, a rough and uneducated man,

At the very beginning of his work against him, he styles him “hominem rusticum et vix primis quoque imbutum literis.”

This whole question, it is well known, is still a problem in exegesis. The perpetua virginitas of Mary has less support from Scripture than the opposite theory. But it is so essential to the whole ascetic system, that it became from this time an article of the Catholic faith, and the denial of it was anathematized as blasphemous heresy. A considerable number of Protestant divines,

Luther, for instance (who even calls Helvidiusa “gross fool”), and Zuingle, among the Reformers; Olshausen and J. P. Lange, among the later theologians.

Vigilantius, originally from Gaul,

Respecting his descent, compare the diffuse treatise of the tedious but thorough Walch, l.c. p. 675-677.

The presbyter Aerius of Sebaste, about 360, belongs also among the partial opponents of monasticism. For, though himself an ascetic, he contended against the fast laws and the injunction of fasts at certain times, considering them an encroachment upon Christian freedom. Epiphanius also ascribes to him three other heretical views: denial of the superiority of bishops to presbyters, opposition to the usual Easter festival, and opposition to prayers for the dead.

Epiph. Haer. 75. Comp. also Walch, l.c. iii. 321-338. Bellarmine, on account of this external resemblance, styles Protestantism the Aerian heresy.

§ 49. Clergy and Laity. Elections.

The clergy, according to the precedent of the Old Testament, came to be more and more rigidly distinguished, as a peculiar order, from the body of the laity. The ordination, which was solemnized by the laying on of hands and prayer, with the addition at a later period of an anointing with oil and balsam, marked the formal entrance into the special priesthood, as baptism initiated into the universal priesthood; and, like baptism, it bore an indefeasible character (character indelebilis). By degrees the priestly office assumed the additional distinction of celibacy and of external marks, such as tonsure, and sacerdotal vestments worn at first only during official service, then in every-day life. The idea of the universal priesthood of believers retreated in proportion, though it never passed entirely out of sight, but was from time to time asserted even in this age. Augustine, for example, says, that as all are called Christians on account of their baptism, so all believers are priests, because they are members of the one High Priest.

De Civit. Dei, lib. xx. cap. 10: ”Erunt sacerdotes Dei et Christi et regnabunt cum eo mille annos (Apoc. xx. 6): non utique de solis episcopis et presbyteris dictum est, qui proprie jam vocantur in Ecclesia sacerdotes; sed sicut omnes Christianos dicimus propter mysticum chrisma, sic omnes sacerdotes, quoniam membra sunt unius sacerdotis. De quibus apostolus Petrus: Plebs, inquit, sancta regale sacerdotium (1 Pet. ii. 9).” Comp. Ambrosiaster ad Eph. iv. 11; Jerome ad Tit. i. 7 and Pope Leo I., Sermon. iv. 1.

The progress of the hierarchical principle also encroached gradually upon the rights of the people in the election of their pastors.

According to Clemens Romanus, ad Corinth. c. 44, the consent of the whole congregation in the choice of their officers was the apostolic and post-apostolic custom; and the Epistles of Cyprian, especially Ep. 68, show that the same rule continued in the middle of the third century. Comp. vol. i. § 105.

The emperor also, after the middle of the fourth century, exercised a decisive influence in the election of metropolitans and patriarchs, and often abused it in a despotic and arbitrary way.

Thus every mode of appointment was evidently exposed to abuse, and could furnish no security against unworthy candidates, if the electors, whoever they might be, were destitute of moral earnestness and the gift of spiritual discernment.

Toward the end of the period before us the republican element in the election of bishops entirely disappeared. The Greek church after the eighth century vested the franchise exclusively in the bishops.

The seventh ecumenical council, at Nice, 787, in its third canon, on the basis of a wrong interpretation of the fourth canon of the first council of Nice, expressly prohibited the people and the secular power from any share in the election of bishops. Also the eighth general council prescribes that the bishop should be chosen only by the college of bishops.

Even the election of pope, after the downfall of the West Roman empire, came largely under control of the secular authorities of Rome; first, of the Ostrogothic kings; then, of the exarchs of Ravenna in the name of the Byzantine emperor; and, after Charlemagne, of the emperor of Germany; till, in 1059, through the influence of Hildebrand (afterward Gregory VII.), it was lodged exclusively with the college of cardinals, which was filled by the pope himself. Yet the papal absolutism of the middle age, like the modern Napoleonic military despotism in the state, found it well, under favorable prospects, to enlist the democratic principle for the advancement of its own interests.

§ 52. The Lower Clergy.

As the authority and influence of the bishops, after the accession of Constantine, increased, the lower clergy became more and more dependent upon them. The episcopate and the presbyterate were now rigidly distinguished. And yet the memory of their primitive identity lingered. Jerome, at the end of the fourth century, reminds the bishops that they owe their elevation above the presbyters, not so much to Divine institution as to ecclesiastical usage; for before the outbreak of controversies in the church there was no distinction between the two, except that presbyter is a term of age, and bishop a term of official dignity; but when men, at the instigation of Satan, erected parties and sects, and, instead of simply following Christ, named themselves of Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, all agreed to put one of the presbyters at the head of the rest, that by his universal supervision of the churches, he might kill the seeds of division.

Hieron. Comm. ad Tit. i. 7: “Idem est ergo presbyter qui episcopus, et antequam diaboli instinctu studia in religione fierent ... communi presbyterorum consilio ecclesiae gubernabantur,” etc. Comp. Epist. ad Evangelum presbyterum Ep. 146, ed. Vall. Opera, i. 1074 sqq.; Ep. 101, ed. Bened.), and Epist. ad Oceanum (Ep. 69, ed. Vall., Ep. 82, ed. Bened.). In the latter epistle he remarks: “Apud veteres iidem episcopi et presbyteri fuerunt, quia illud nomen dignitatis est, hoc aetatis.”

In the episcopal or cathedral churches the Presbyters still formed the council of the bishop. In town and country congregations, where no bishop officiated, they were more independent. Preaching, administration of the sacraments, and care of souls were their functions. In. North Africa they were for a long time not allowed to preach in the presence of the bishop; until Augustine was relieved by his bishop of this restriction. The seniores plebis in the African church of the fourth and fifth centuries were not clergymen, but civil personages and other prominent members of the congregation.

Optatus of Mileve calls them, indeed, ecclesiasticos viros; not, however, in the sense of clerici, from whom, on the contrary, he distinguishes them, but in the broad sense of catholic Christians as distinguished from heathens and heretics. Comp. on these seniores plebis, orlay elders, as they are called, the discussion of Dr. Rothe: Die Anfänge der christl. Kirche u. ihrer Verfassung, vol. i. p. 227 sqq.

In the fourth century arose the office of archpresbyter, whose duty it was to preside over the worship, and sometimes to take the place of the bishop in his absence or incapacity.

The Deacons, also called Levites, retained the same functions which they had held in the preceding period. In the West, they alone, not the lectors, were allowed to read in public worship the lessons from the Gospels; which, containing the words of the Lord, were placed above the Epistles, or the words of the apostles. They were also permitted to baptize and to preach. After the pattern of the church in Jerusalem, the number of deacons, even in large congregations, was limited to seven; though not rigidly, for the cathedral of Constantinople had, under Justinian I., besides sixty presbyters, a hundred deacons, forty deaconesses, ninety subdeacons, a hundred and ten lectors, twenty-five precentors, and a hundred janitors—a total of five hundred and twenty-five officers. Though subordinate to the presbyters, the deacons frequently stood in close relations with the bishop, and exerted a greater influence. Hence they not rarely looked upon ordination to the presbyterate as a degradation. After the beginning of the fourth century an archdeacon stood at the head of the college, the most confidential adviser of the bishop, his representative and legate, and not seldom his successor in office. Thus Athanasius first appears as archdeacon of Alexandria at the council of Nice, clothed with important influence; and upon the death of the latter he succeeds to the patriarchal chair of Alexandria.

The office of Deaconess, which, under the strict separation of the sexes in ancient times, and especially in Greece, was necessary to the completion of the diaconate, and which originated in the apostolic age,

Comp. Rom. xii. 1, 12, and my Hist. of the Apost. Church, § 135, p. 535 sqq.

The noblest type of an apostolic deaconess, which has come down to us from this period, is Olympias, the friend of Chrysostom, and the recipient of seventeen beautiful epistles from him.

They are found in Montfaucon’s Bened. edition of Chrysostom, tom. iii. p. 524-604, and in Lomler’s edition of Joann. Chrysost. Opera praestantissima, 1840, p. 168-252. These seventeen epistles to Olympias are, in the judgment of Photius as quoted by Montfaucon (Op. iii. 524), of the epistles of Chrysostom, “longissimae, elegantissimae, omniumque utilissimae.” Compare also Montfaucon’s prefatory remarks on Olympias.

In the West, on the contrary, the office of deaconess was first shorn of its clerical character by a prohibition of ordination passed by the Gallic councils in the fifth and sixth centuries;

A mere benediction was appointed in place of ordination. The first synod of Orange (Arausicana i.), in 441, directed in the 26th canon: “Diaconae omnimodis non ordinandae [thus they had previously been ordained in Gaul also, and reckoned with the clergy]; si quae jam sunt, benedictioni, quae populo impenditur, capita submittant.” Likewise was the ordination of deaconesses forbidden by the council of Epaon in Burgundy, in 517, can. 21, and by the second council at Orleans, in 533, can. 17 and 18.

To the ordinary clergy there were added in this period sundry extraordinary church offices, rendered necessary by the multiplication of religious functions in large cities and dioceses:

1. Stewards.

Οἰκόνομοι. Besides these there were also κειμηλιάρχαι, sacellarii, thesaurarii.

2. Secretaries,

·Ταχυγράφοι, notarii, excerptores.

3. Nurses or Parabolani,

Parabolani, probably from παραβάλλειν τὴν ζωήν, to risk life; because in contagious diseases they often exposed themselves to the danger of death.

4. Buriers of the Dead

78 Κοπιάται, copiattae, fossores, fossarii.

§ 54. Organization of the Hierarchy: Country Bishop, City Bishops, and Metropolitans.

The episcopate, notwithstanding the unity of the office and its rights, admitted the different grades of country bishop, ordinary city bishop, metropolitan, and patriarch. Such a distinction had already established itself on the basis of free religious sentiment in the church; so that the incumbents of the apostolic sees, like Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, stood at the head of the hierarchy. But this gradation now assumed a political character, and became both modified and confirmed by attachment to the municipal division of the Roman empire.

Constantine the Great divided the whole empire into four praefectures (the Oriental, the Illyrian, the Italian, and the Gallic); the praefectures into vicariates, dioceses, or proconsulates, fourteen or fifteen in all;

The dioceses or vicariates were as follows:

I. The Praefectura Orientalisconsisted of the five dioceses of Oriens, with Antioch as its political and ecclesiastical capital; Aegyptus, with Alexandria; Asia proconsularis, with Ephesus; Pontus, with Caesarea in Cappadocia; Thracia, with Heraklea, afterward Constantinople.

II. The Praefectura Illyrica, with Thessalonica as its capital, had only the two dioceses of Macedonia and Dacia.

III. The Praefectura Italicaembraced Roma (i.e. South Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean, or the so-called Suburban provinces); Italia, or the Vicariate of Italy, with its centre at Mediolanum (Milan); Illyricum occidentale, with its capital at Sirmium; and Africa occidentalis, with Carthage.

IV. The Praefectura Gallicaembraced the dioceses of Gallia, with Treveri (Trier) and Lugdunum (Lyons); Hispania, with Hispalis (Sevilla); and Britannnia, with Eboracum (York).

It was natural, that after the union of church and state the ecclesiastical organization and the political should, so far as seemed proper, and hence of course with manifold exceptions, accommodate themselves to one another. In the East this principle of conformity was more palpably and rigidly carried out than in the West. The council of Nice in the fourth century proceeds upon it, and the second and fourth ecumenical councils confirm it. The political influence made itself most distinctly felt in the elevation of Constantinople to a patriarchal see. The Roman bishop Leo, however, protested against the reference of his own power to political considerations, and planted it exclusively upon the primacy of Peter; though evidently the Roman see owed its importance to the favorable cooperation of both these influences. The power of the patriarchs extended over one or more municipal dioceses; while the metropolitans presided over single provinces. The word diocese (διοίκησις) passed from the political into the ecclesiastical terminology, and denoted at first a patriarchal district, comprising several provinces (thus the expression occurs continually in the Greek acts of councils), but afterward came to be applied in the West to each episcopal district. The circuit of a metropolitan was called in the East an eparchy (ἐπαρχία), in the West provincia. An ordinary bishopric was called in the East a parish (παροικία), while in the Latin church the term (parochia) was usually applied to a mere pastoral charge.

The lowest rank in the episcopal hierarchy was occupied by the country bishops,

Χωρεπίσκοποι. The principal statements respecting them are: Epist. Synodi Antioch., a.d.270, in Euseb. H. E. vii. 36 (where they are called ἐπίσκοποι τῶν ὁμόρων ἀγρῶν); Concil. Ancyr., a.d.315, can. 13 (where they are forbidden to ordain presbyters and deacons); Concil. Antioch., a.d.341, can. 10 (same prohibition); Conc. Laodic., between 320 and 372, can. 57 (where the erection of new country bishoprics is forbidden); and Conc. Sardic., a.d.343, can. 6 (where they are wholly abolished).

Among the city bishops towered the bishops of the capital cities of the various provinces. They were styled in the East metropolitans, in the West usually archbishops.

Μητροπολίτης, metropolitanus, and the kindred title ἔξαρχος (applied to the most powerful metropolitans); ἀρχιεπίσκοπος, archiepiscopus, and primas.

This metropolitan constitution, which had gradually arisen out of the necessities of the church, became legally established in the East in the fourth century, and passed thence to the Graeco-Russian church. The council of Nice, at that early day, ordered in the fourth canon, that every new bishop should be ordained by all, or at least by three, of the bishops of the eparchy (the municipal province), under the direction and with the sanction of the metropolitan.

This canon has been recently discovered also in a Coptic translation, and published by Pitra, in the Spiclegium Solesmense, i. 526 sq.

In Africa a similar system had existed from the time of Cyprian, before the church and the state were united. Every province had a Primas; the oldest bishop being usually chosen to this office. The bishop of Carthage, however, was not only primate of Africa proconsularis, but at the same time, corresponding to the proconsul of Carthage, the ecclesiastical head of Numidia and Mauretania, and had power to summon a general council of Africa.

Cyprian, Epist. 45, says of his province of Carthage: “Latius fusa est nostra provincia; habet enim Numidiam et Mauretaniam sibi cohaerentes.”

§ 56. Synodical Legislation on the Patriarchal Power and Jurisdiction.

To follow now the ecclesiastical legislation respecting this patriarchal oligarchy in chronological order:

The germs of it already lay in the ante-Nicene period, when the bishops of Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome, partly in virtue of the age and apostolic origin of their churches, partly, on account of the political prominence of those three cities as the three capitals of the Roman empire, steadily asserted a position of preëminence. The apostolic origin of the churches of Rome and Antioch is evident from the New Testament: Alexandria traced its Christianity, at least indirectly through the evangelist Mark, to Peter, and was politically more important than Antioch; while Rome from the first had precedence of both in church and in state. This preëminence of the oldest and most powerful metropolitans acquired formal legislative validity and firm establishment through the ecumenical councils of the fourth and fifth centuries.

The first ecumenical council of Nice, in 325, as yet knew nothing of five patriarchs, but only the three metropolitans above named, confirming them in their traditional rights.

Accordingly Pope Nicolas, in 866, in a letter to the Bulgarian prince Bogoris, would acknowledge only the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch as patriarchs in the proper sense, because they presided over apostolic churches; whereas Constantinople was not of apostolic founding, and was not even mentioned by the most venerable of all councils, the Nicene; Jerusalem was named indeed by these councils, but only under the name of Aelia.

“The ancient custom, which has obtained in Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis, shall continue in force, viz.: that the bishop of Alexandria have rule over all these [provinces], since this also is customary with the bishop of Rome [that is, not in Egypt, but with reference to his own diocese]. Likewise also at Antioch and in the other eparchies, the churches shall retain their prerogatives. Now, it is perfectly clear, that, if any one has been made bishop without the consent of the metropolitan, the great council does not allow him to be bishop.”

In the oldest Latin Cod. canonum (in Mansi, vi. 1186) this canon is preceded by the important words: Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum. These are, however, manifestly spurious, being originally no part of the canon itself, but a superscription, which gave an expression to the Roman inference from the Nicene canon. Comp. Gieseler, i. 2, § 93, note 1; and Hefele, Hist. of Councils, i. 384 sqq.

The Nicene fathers passed this canon not as introducing anything new, but merely as confirming an existing relation on the basis of church tradition; and that, with special reference to Alexandria, on account of the troubles existing there. Rome was named only for illustration; and Antioch and all the other eparchies or provinces were secured their admitted rights.

So Greenwood also views the matter, Cathedra Petri, 1859, vol. i. p. 181: “It was manifestly not the object of this canon to confer any new jurisdiction upon the church of Alexandria, but simply to confirm its customary prerogative. By way of illustration, it places that prerogative, whatever it was, upon the same level with that of the two other eparchal churches of Rome and Antioch. Moreover, the words of the canon disclose no other ground of claim but custom; and the customs of each eparchia are restricted to the territorial limits of the diocese or eparchia itself. And though, within those limits, the several customary rights and prerogatives may have differed, yet beyond them no jurisdiction of any kind could, by virtue of this canon, have any existence at all.”

Between the first and second ecumenical councils arose the new patriarchate of Constantinople, or New Rome, built by Constantine in 330, and elevated to the rank of the imperial residence. The bishop of this city was not only the successor of the bishop of the ancient Byzantium, hitherto under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Heraclea, but, through the favor of the imperial court and the bishops who were always numerously assembled there, it placed itself in a few decennia among the first metropolitans of the East, and in the fifth century became the most powerful rival of the bishop of old Rome.

This new patriarchate was first officially recognized at the first ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in 381, and was conceded “the precedence in honor, next to the bishop of Rome,” the second place among all bishops; and that, on the purely political consideration, that New Rome was the residence of the emperor.

Conc. Constant. i. can 3: Τὸν μέντοι Κώσταντινουπόλεως ἐπίσκοπον ἔχειν τὰ πρεσβεῖα τῆς τιμῆς, μετὰ τὸν τῆσ Ῥώμης ἐπίσκοπον, διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτὴν νέαν Ῥώμην. This canon is quoted also by Socrates, v. 8, and Sozomen, vii. 9, and confirmed by the council of Chalcedon (see below); so that it must be from pure dogmatical bias, that Baronius (Annal. ad ann. 381, n. 35, 36) questions its genuineness

Many Greeks took this as a formal assertion of the equality of the bishop of Constantinople with the bishop of Rome, understanding “next” or “after” (metav) as referring only to time, not to rank. But it is more natural to regard this as conceding a primacy of honor, which the Roman see could claim on different grounds. The popes, as the subsequent protest of Leo shows, were not satisfied with this, because they were unwilling to be placed in the same category with the Constantinopolitan fledgling, and at the same time assumed a supremacy of jurisdiction over the whole church. On the other hand, this decree was unwelcome also to the patriarch of Alexandria, because this see had hitherto held the second rank, and was now required to take the third. Hence the canon was not subscribed by Timotheus of Alexandria, and was regarded in Egypt as void. Afterward, however, the emperors prevailed with the Alexandrian patriarchs to yield this point.

After the council of 381, the bishop of Constantinople indulged in manifold encroachments on the rights of the metropolitans of Ephesus and Caesarea in Cappadocia, and even on the rights of the other patriarchs. In this extension of his authority he was favored by the fact that, in spite of the prohibition of the council of Sardica, the bishops of all the districts of the East continually resided in Constantinople, in order to present all kinds of interests to the emperor. These concerns of distant bishops were generally referred by the emperor to the bishop of Constantinople and his council, the σύνοδος ἐνδημοῦσα, as it was called, that is, a council of the bishops resident (ἐνδημούντων) in Constantinople, under his presidency. In this way his trespasses even upon the bounds of other patriarchs obtained the right of custom by consent of parties, if not the sanction of church legislation. Nectarius, who was not elected till after that council, claimed the presidency at a council in 394, over the two patriarchs who were present, Theophilus of Alexandria and Flavian of Antioch; decided the matter almost alone; and thus was the first to exercise the primacy over the entire East. Under his successor, Chrysostom, the compass of the see extended itself still farther, and, according to Theodoret,

H. E. lib. v. cap. 28.

The fourth ecumenical council, held at Chalcedon in 451 confirmed and extended the power of the bishop of Constantinople, by ordaining in the celebrated twenty-eighth canon:

“Following throughout the decrees of the holy fathers, and being “acquainted with the recently read canon of the hundred and fifty bishops [i.e. the third canon of the second ecumenical council of 381], we also have determined and decreed the same in reference to the prerogatives of the most holy church of Constantinople or New Rome. For with reason did the fathers confer prerogatives (τὰ πρεσβεῖα) on the throne [the episcopal chair] of ancient Rome, on account of her character as the imperial city (διὰ τὸ βασιλεύειν); and, moved by the same consideration, the hundred and fifty bishops recognized the same prerogatives (τὰ ἴσα ςπρεσβεῖα) also in the most holy throne of New Rome; with good reason judging, that the city, which is honored with the imperial dignity and the senate [i.e. where the emperor and senate reside], and enjoys the same [municipal] privileges as the ancient imperial Rome, should also be equally elevated in ecclesiastical respects, and be the second after he(δευτέραν μετ ̓ ἐκείνην.].ς

“And [we decree] that of the dioceses of Pontus, Asia [Asia proconsularis], and Thrace, only the metropolitans, but in such districts of those dioceses as are occupied by barbarians, also the [ordinary] bishops, be ordained by the most holy throne of the most holy church at Constantinople; while of course every metropolitan in those dioceses ordains the new bishops of a province in concurrence with the existing bishops of that province, as is directed in the divine (θείοις) canons. But the metropolitans of those dioceses, as already said, shall be ordained by the archbishop (ἀρχιεπισκόπου) of Constantinople, after they shall have been unanimously elected in the usual way, and he [the archbishop of Constantinople] shall have been informed of it.”

We have divided this celebrated Chalcedonian canon into two parts, though in the Greek text the parts are (by Καὶ ωὝστε) closely connected. The first part assigns to the bishop of Constantinople the second rank among the patriarchs, and is simply a repetition and confirmation of the third canon of the council of Constantinople; the second part goes farther, and sanctions the supremacy, already actually exercised by Chrysostom and his successors, of the patriarch of Constantinople, not only over the diocese of Thrace, but also over the dioceses of Asia Minor and Pontus, and gives him the exclusive right to ordain both the metropolitans of these three dioceses, and all the bishops of the barbarians

Among the barbarian tribes, over whom the bishops of Constantinople exercised an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, were the Huns on the Bosphorus, whose king, Gorda, received baptism in the time of Justinian; the Herulians, who received the Christian faith in 527; the Abasgians and Alanians on the Euxine sea, who about the same time received priests from Constantinople. Comp. Wiltsch, i. 144 and 145.

The council of Chalcedon in this decree only followed consistently the oriental principle of politico-ecclesiastical division. Its intention was to make the new political capital also the ecclesiastical capital of the East, to advance its bishop over the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, and to make him as nearly as possible equal to the bishop of Rome. Thus was imposed a wholesome check on the ambition of the Alexandrian patriarch, who in various ways, as the affair of Theophilus and Dioscurus shows, had abused his power to the prejudice of the church.

But thus, at the same time, was roused the jealousy of the bishop of Rome, to whom a rival in Constantinople, with equal prerogatives, was far more dangerous than a rival in Alexandria or Antioch. Especially offensive must it have been to him, that the council of Chalcedon said not a word of the primacy of Peter, and based the power of the Roman bishop, like that of the Constantinopolitan, on political grounds; which was indeed not erroneous, yet only half of the truth, and in that respect unfair.

Just here, therefore, is the point, where the Eastern church entered into a conflict with the Western, which continues to this day. The papal delegates protested against the twenty-eighth canon of the Chalcedonian council, on the spot, in the sixteenth and last session of the council; but in vain, though their protest was admitted to record. They appealed to the sixth canon of the Nicene council, according to the enlarged Latin version, which, in the later addition, “Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum,” seems to assign the Roman bishop a position above all the patriarchs, and drops Constantinople from notice; whereupon the canon was read to them in its original form from the Greek Acts, without that addition, together with the first three canons of the second ecumenical council with their express acknowledgment of the patriarch of Constantinople in the second rank.

This correction of the Roman legates is so little to the taste of the Roman Catholic historians, especially the ultramontane, that the Ballerini, in their edition of the works of Leo the Great, tom. iii. p. xxxvii. sqq., and even Hefele, Conciliengesch. i. p. 385, and ii. p. 522, have without proof declared the relevant passage in the Greek Acts of the council of Chalcedon a later interpolation. Hefele, who can but concede the departure of the Latin version from the original text of the sixth canon of Nice, thinks, however, that the Greek text was not read in Chalcedon, because even this bore against the elevation of Constantinople, and therefore in favor of the Roman legates. But the Roman legates, as also Leo in his protest against the 28th decree of Chalcedon, laid chief stress upon the Roman addition, Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum, and considered the equalization of any other patriarch with the bishop of Rome incompatible with it. Since the legates, as is conceded, appealed to the Nicene canon, the Greeks had first to meet this appeal, before they passed to the canons of the council of Constantinople. Only the two together formed a sufficient answer to the Roman protest.

After the council, the Roman bishop, Leo, himself protested in three letters of the 22d May, 452; the first of which was addressed to the emperor Marcian, the second to the empress Pulcheria, the third to Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople.

Leo, Epist. 104, 105, and 106 (al, Ep. 78-80). Comp. Hefele, l.c. ii. 530 sqq.

But this protest could not change the decree of the council nor the position of the Greek church in the matter, although, under the influence of the emperor, Anatolius wrote an humble letter to Leo. The bishops of Constantinople asserted their rank, and were sustained by the Byzantine emperors. The twenty-eighth canon of the Chalcedonian council was expressly confirmed by Justinian I., in the 131st Novelle (c. 1), and solemnly renewed by the Trullan council (can. 36), but was omitted in the Latin collections of canons by Prisca, Dionysius, Exiguus, and Isidore. The loud contradiction of Rome gradually died away; yet she has never formally acknowledged this canon, except during the Latin empire and the Latin patriarchate at Constantinople, when the fourth Lateran council, under Innocent III., in 1215, conceded that the patriarch of Constantinople should hold the next rank after the patriarch of Rome, before those of Alexandria and Antioch.

Harduin, tom. vii. 23; Schröckh, xvii. 43; and Hefele, ii. 544.

Finally, the bishop of Jerusalem, after long contests with the metropolitan of Caesarea and the patriarch of Antioch, succeeded in advancing himself to the patriarchal dignity; but his distinction remained chiefly a matter of honor, far below the other patriarchates in extent of real power. Had not the ancient Jerusalem, in the year 70, been left with only a part of the city wall and three gates to mark it, it would doubtless, being the seat of the oldest Christian congregation, have held, as in the time of James, a central position in the hierarchy. Yet as it was, a reflection of the original dignity of the mother city fell upon the new settlement of Aelia Capitolina, which, after Adrian, rose upon the venerable ruins. The pilgrimage of the empress Helena, and the magnificent church edifices of her son on the holy places, gave Jerusalem a new importance as the centre of devout pilgrimage from all quarters of Christendom. Its bishop was subordinate, indeed, to the metropolitan of Caesarea, but presided with him (probably secundo loco) at the Palestinian councils.

Comp. Eusebius, himself the metropolitan of Caesarea, H. E. v. 23. He gives the succession of the bishops of Jerusalem, as well as of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, while he omits those of Caesarea.

§ 57. The Rival Patriarchs of Old and New Rome.

Thus at the close of the fourth century we see the Catholic church of the Graeco-Roman empire under the oligarchy of five coordinate and independent patriarchs, four in the East and one in the West. But the analogy of the political constitution, and the tendency toward a visible, tangible representation of the unity of the church, which had lain at the bottom of the development of the hierarchy from the very beginnings of the episcopate, pressed beyond oligarchy to monarchy; especially in the West. Now that the empire was geographically and politically severed into East and West, which, after the death of Theodosius, in 395, had their several emperors, and were never permanently reunited, we can but expect in like manner a double head in the hierarchy. This we find in the two patriarchs of old Rome and New Rome; the one representing the Western or Latin church, the other the Eastern or Greek. Their power and their relation to each other we must now more carefully observe.

The organization of the church in the East being so largely influenced by the political constitution, the bishop of the imperial capital could not fail to become the most powerful of the four oriental patriarchs. By the second and fourth ecumenical councils, as we have already seen, his actual preëminence was ratified by ecclesiastical sanction, and he was designated to the foremost dignity.

Τὰ πρεσβεῖα τῆς τιμῆς... διὰ τὸ εἷναι αὐτὴν [i.e. Constantinople] νέαν Ῥώμην. Comp. § 56.

In this long contest between the two leading patriarchs of Christendom, the patriarch of Rome at last carried the day. The monarchical tendency of the hierarchy was much stronger in the West than in the East, and was urging a universal monarchy in the church.

The patriarch of Constantinople enjoyed indeed the favor of the emperor, and all the benefit of the imperial residence. New Rome was most beautifully and most advantageously situated for a metropolis of government, of commerce, and of culture, on the bridge between two continents; and it formed a powerful bulwark against the barbarian conquests. It was never desecrated by an idol temple, but was founded a Christian city. It fostered the sciences and arts, at a time when the West was whelmed by the wild waves of barbarism; it preserved the knowledge of the Greek language and literature through the middle ages; and after the invasion of the Turks it kindled by its fugitive scholars the enthusiasm of classic studies in the Latin church, till Greece rose from the dead with the New Testament in her hand, and held the torch for the Reformation.

But the Roman patriarch had yet greater advantages. In him were united, as even the Greek historian Theodoret concedes,

Epist. 113, to Pope Leo I.

In the first place, his authority rested on an ecclesiastical and spiritual basis, reaching back, as public opinion granted, through an unbroken succession, to Peter the apostle; while Constantinople was in no sense an apostolica sedes, but had a purely political origin, though, by transfer, and in a measure by usurpation, it had possessed itself of the metropolitan rights of Ephesus

That the apostle Andrew brought the gospel to the ancient Byzantium, is an entirely unreliable legend of later times.

Then, too, considered even in a political point of view, old Rome had a far longer and grander imperial tradition to show, and was identified in memory with the bloom of the empire; while New Rome marked the beginning of its decline. When the Western empire fell into the hands of the barbarians, the Roman bishop was the only surviving heir of this imperial past, or, in the well-known dictum of Hobbes, “the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.”

Again, the very remoteness of Rome from the imperial court was favorable to the development of a hierarchy independent of all political influence and intrigue; while the bishop of Constantinople had to purchase the political advantages of the residence at the cost of ecclesiastical freedom. The tradition of the donatio Constantini, though a fabrication of the eighth century, has thus much truth: that the transfer of the imperial residence to the East broke the way for the temporal power and the political independence of the papacy.

Further, amidst the great trinitarian and christological controversies of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, the popes maintained the powerful prestige of almost undeviating ecumenical orthodoxy and doctrinal stability;

One exception is the brief pontificate of the Arian, Felix II, whom the emperor Constantius, in 355, forcibly enthroned during the exile of Liberius, and who is regarded by some as an illegitimate anti-pope. The accounts respecting him are, however, very conflicting, and so are the opinions of even Roman Catholic historians. Liberius also, in 357, lapsed for a short time into Arianism that he might be recalled from exile. Another and later exception is Pope Honorius, whom even the sixth ecumenical council of Constantinople, 681, anathematized for Monothelite heresy.

Finally, though the Greek church, down to the fourth ecumenical council, was unquestionably the main theatre of church history and the chief seat of theological learning, yet, according to the universal law of history, “Westward the star of empire takes its way,” the Latin church, and consequently the Roman patriarchate, already had the future to itself. While the Eastern patriarchates were facilitating by internal quarrels and disorder the conquests of the false prophet, Rome was boldly and victoriously striking westward, and winning the barbarian tribes of Europe to the religion of the cross.

§ 58. The Latin Patriarch.

These advantages of the patriarch of Rome over the patriarch of Constantinople are at the same time the leading causes of the rise of the papacy, which we must now more closely pursue.

The papacy is undeniably the result of a long process of history. Centuries were employed in building it, and centuries have already been engaged upon its partial destruction. Lust of honor and of power, and even open fraud,

Recall the interpolations of papistic passages in the works of Cyprian; the Roman enlargement of the sixth canon of Nice; the citation of the Sardican canon under the name and the authority of the Nicene council; and the later notorious pseudo-Isidorian decretals. The popes, to be sure, were not the original authors of these falsifications, but they used them freely and repeatedly for their purposes.

That Providence which moves the helm of the history of world and church according to an eternal plan, not only prepares in silence and in a secrecy unknown even to themselves the suitable persons for a given work, but also lays in the depths of the past the foundations of mighty institutions, that they may appear thoroughly furnished as soon as the time may demand them. Thus the origin and gradual growth of the Latin patriarchate at Rome looked forward to the middle age, and formed part of the necessary, external outfit of the church for her disciplinary mission among the heathen barbarians. The vigorous hordes who destroyed the West-Roman empire were to be themselves built upon the ruins of the old civilization, and trained by an awe-inspiring ecclesiastical authority and a firm hierarchical organization, to Christianity and freedom, till, having come of age, they should need the legal schoolmaster no longer, and should cast away his cords from them. The Catholic hierarchy, with its pyramid-like culmination in the papacy, served among the Romanic and Germanic peoples. until the time of the Reformation, a purpose similar to that of the Jewish theocracy and the old Roman empire respectively in the inward and outward preparation for Christianity. The full exhibition of this pedagogic purpose belongs to the history of the middle age; but the foundation for it we find already being laid in the period before us.

The Roman bishop claims, that the four dignities of bishop, metropolitan, patriarch, and pope or primate of the whole church, are united in himself. The first three offices must be granted him in all historical justice; the last is denied him by the Greek church, and by the Evangelical, and by all non-Catholic sects.

His bishopric is the city of Rome, with its cathedral church of St. John Lateran, which bears over its main entrance the inscription: Omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput; thus remarkably outranking even the church of St. Peter—as if Peter after all were not the first and highest apostle, and had to yield at last to the superiority of John, the representative of the ideal church of the future. Tradition says that the emperor Constantine erected this basilica by the side of the old Lateran palace, which had come down from heathen times, and gave the palace to Pope Sylvester; and it remained the residence of the popes and the place of assembly for their councils (the Lateran councils) till after the exile of Avignon, when they took up their abode in the Vatican beside the ancient church of St. Peter.

As metropolitan or archbishop, the bishop of Rome had immediate jurisdiction over the seven suffragan bishops, afterward called cardinal bishops, of the vicinity: Ostia, Portus, Silva candida, Sabina, Praeneste, Tusculum, and Albanum.

As patriarch, he rightfully stood on equal footing with the four patriarchs of the East, but had a much larger district and the primacy of honor. The name is here of no account, since the fact stands fast. The Roman bishops called themselves not patriarchs, but popes, that they might rise the sooner above their colleagues; for the one name denotes oligarchical power, the other, monarchical. But in the Eastern church and among modern Catholic historians the designation is also quite currently applied to Rome.

The Roman patriarchal circuit primarily embraced the ten suburban provinces, as they were called, which were under the political jurisdiction of the Roman deputy, the Vicarius Urbis; including the greater part of Central Italy, all Upper Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.

Concil. Nicaean. of 325, can. 6, in the Latin version of Rufinus (Hist. Eccl. x. 6): “Et ut apud Alexandria et in urbe Roma vetusta consuetudo servetur, ut vel ille Ægypti, vel hic suburbicariarum ecclesiarum sollicitudinem gerat.” The words suburb. eccl. are wanting in the Greek original, and are a Latin definition of the patriarchal diocese of Rome at the end of the fourth century. Since the seventeenth century they have given rise to a long controversy among the learned. The jurist Gothofredus and his friend Salmasius limited the regiones suburbicariae to the small province of the Praefectus Urbis, i.e. to the city of Rome with the immediate vicinity to the hundredth milestone; while the Jesuit Sirmond extended it to the much greater official district of the Vicarius Urbis, viz., the ten provinces of Campania, Tuscia with Umbria, Picenum suburbicarium, Valeria, Samnium, Apulia with Calabria, Lucania and Brutii, Sicilia, Sardinia, and Corsica. The comparison of the Roman bishop with the Alexandrian in the sixth canon of the Nicene council favors the latter view; since even the Alexandrian diocese likewise stretched over several provinces. The Prisca, however—a Latin collection of canons from the middle of the fifth century—has perhaps hit the truth of the matter, in saying, in its translation of the canon in question: “Antiqui moris est ut urbis Romae episcopus habeat principatum, ut suburbicaria loca [i.e. here, no doubt, the smaller province of the Praefectus] et omnem provinciam suam [i.e. the larger district of the Vicarius, or a still wider, indefinite extent] sollicitudine sua gubernet.” Comp. Mansi, Coll. Conc. vi. 1127, and Hefele, i. 380 sqq.

The bishop of Rome was from the beginning the only Latin patriarch, in the official sense of the word. He stood thus alone, in the first place, for the ecclesiastical reason, that Rome was the only sedes apostolica in the West, while in the Greek church three patriarchates and several other episcopal sees, such as Ephesus, Thessalonica, and Corinth, shared the honor of apostolic foundation. Then again, he stood politically alone, since Rome was the sole metropolis of the West, while in the East there were three capitals of the empire, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. Hence Augustine, writing from the religious point of view, once calls Pope Innocent I. the “ruler of the Western church;”

Contra Julianum, lib. i. cap. 6.

It was, moreover, the highest interest of all orthodox churches in the West, amidst the political confusion and in conflict with the Arian Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, to bind themselves closely to a common centre, and to secure the powerful protection of a central authority. This centre they could not but find in the primitive apostolic church of the metropolis of the world. The Roman bishops were consulted in almost all important questions of doctrine or of discipline. After the end of the fourth century they issued to the Western bishops in reply, pastoral epistles and decretal letters,

Epistola decretales; an expression, which, according to Gieseler and others, occurs first about 500, in the so-called decretum Gelasii de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis.

§ 59. Conflicts and Conquests of the Latin Patriarchate.

But this patriarchal power was not from the beginning and to a uniform extent acknowledged in the entire West. Not until the latter part of the sixth century did it reach the height we have above described.

This is conceded by Hefele, i. 383 sq.: “It is, however, not to be mistaken, that the bishop of Rome did not everywhere, in all the West, exercise full patriarchal rights; that, to wit, in several provinces, simple bishops were ordained without his coöperation.” And not only simple bishops, but also metropolitans. See the text.

In the first place, even in Italy, several metropolitans maintained, down to the close of our period, their own supreme headship, independent of Roman and all other jurisdiction.

Aὐτοκέφαλοι, also ἀκέφαλοι, as in the East especially the archbishops of Cyprus and Bulgaria were called, and some other metropolitans, who were subject to no patriarch.

The North African bishops and councils in the beginning of the fifth century, with all traditional reverence for the apostolic see, repeatedly protested, in the spirit of Cyprian, against encroachments of Rome, and even prohibited all appeal in church controversies from their own to a transmarine or foreign tribunal, upon pain of excommunication.

Comp. the relevant Acts of councils in Gieseler, i. 2, p. 221 sqq., and an extended description of this case of appeal in Greenwood, Cath. Petri, i. p. 299-310, and in Hefele, Concilien-Gesch. ii. 107 sqq., 120, 123 sq.

In Spain the popes found from the first a more favorable field. The orthodox bishops there were so pressed in the fifth century by the Arian Vandals, Suevi, Alani, and soon after by the Goths, that they sought counsel and protection with the bishop of Rome, which, for his own sake, he was always glad to give. So early as 385, Siricius, as we have before observed, issued a decretal letter to a Spanish bishop. The epistles of Leo to Bishop Turibius of Asturica, and the bishops of Gaul and Spain,

Ep. 93 and 95; Mansi, vi. 131 and 132.

In Gaul, Leo succeeded in asserting the Roman jurisdiction, though not without opposition, in the affair of the archbishop Hilary of Arles, or Arelate. The affair has been differently represented from the Gallican and the ultramontane points of view.

This difference shows itself in the two editions of the works of Leo the Great, respectively: that of the French Pasquier Quesnel, a Gallican and Jansenist (exiled 1681, died at Brussels 1719), which also contains the works, and a vindication, of Hilaryof Arles (Par. 1675, in 2 vols.), and was condemned in 1676 by the Congregation of the Index, without their even reading it; and that of the two brothers Ballerini, which appeared in opposition to the former (Ven. 1755-1757, 3 vols.), and represents the Italian ultramontane side. Comp. further on this contest of Hilarius Arelatensis (not to be confounded with Hilarius Pictaviensis, Hilarius Narbonensis, and others of the same name) with Pope Leo, the Vita Hilarii of Honoratus Massiliensis, of about the year 490 (printed in Mansi, vi. 461 sqq., and in the Acta Sanct. ad d. 5 Maji); the article by Perthel, in Illgen’s Zeitschrift for Hist. Theol. 1843; Greenwood, l.c. i. p. 350-356; Milman, Lat. Christianity, i. p. 269-276 (Amer. ed.); and the article “Hilarius” in Wetzer and Welte’s Kirchenlexic vol. v. p. 181 sqq.

The letter of Leo to the Gallican churches, and the edict of the emperor, give us the first example of a defensive and offensive alliance of the central spiritual and temporal powers in the pursuit of an unlimited sovereignty. The edict, however, could of course have power, at most, only in the West, to which the authority of Valentinian was limited. In fact, even Hilary and his successors maintained, in spite of Leo, the prerogatives they had formerly received from Pope Zosimus, and were confirmed in them by later popes.

The popes Vigil, 539-555, Pelagius, 555-559, and Gregory the Great conferred on the archbishop of Arles, besides the pallium, also the papal vicariate (vices). Comp. Wiltsch, i. 71 sq.

With Northern Gaul the Roman bishops came into less frequent contact; yet in this region also there occur, in the fourth and fifth centuries, examples of the successful assertion of their jurisdiction.

The early British church held from the first a very isolated position, and was driven back, by the invasion of the pagan Anglo-Saxons, about the middle of the fifth century, into the mountains of Wales, Cornwallis, Cumberland, and the still more secluded islands. Not till the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons under Gregory the Great did a regular connection begin between England and Rome.

Finally, the Roman bishops succeeded also in extending their patriarchal power eastward, over the praefecture of East Illyria. Illyria belonged originally to the Western empire, remained true to the Nicene faith through the Arian controversies, and for the vindication of that faith attached itself closely to Rome. When Gratian, in 379, incorporated Illyricum Orientale with the Eastern empire, its bishops nevertheless refused to give up their former ecclesiastical connection. Damasus conferred on the metropolitan Acholius, of Thessalonica, as papal vicar, patriarchal rights in the new praefecture. The patriarch of Constantinople endeavored, indeed, repeatedly, to bring this ground into his diocese, but in vain. Justinian, in 535, formed of it a new diocese, with an independent patriarch at Prima Justiniana (or Achrida, his native city); but this arbitrary innovation had no vitality, and Gregory I. recovered active intercourse with the Illyrian bishops. Not until the eighth century, under the emperor Leo the Isaurian, was East Illyria finally severed from the Roman diocese and incorporated with the patriarchate of Constantinople.

Comp. Gieseler, i. 2, p. 21 5 sqq.; and Wiltsch, i. 72 sqq., 431 sqq.

§ 61. Opinions of the Fathers.

A complete collection of the patristic utterances on the primacy of Peter and his successors, though from the Roman point of view, may be found in the work of Rev. Jos. Berington and Rev. John Kirk: “The Faith of Catholics confirmed by Scripture and attested by the Fathers of the first five centuries of the Church,” 3d ed., London, 1846, vol. ii. p. 1–112. Comp. the works quoted sub § 55, and a curious article of Prof. Ferd. Piper, on Rome, the eternal city, in the Evang. Jahrbuch for 1864, p. 17–120, where the opinions of the fathers on the claims of the urbs aeterna and its many fortunes are brought out.

We now pursue the development of this idea in the church fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. In general they agree in attaching to Peter a certain primacy over the other apostles, and in considering him the foundation of the church in virtue of his confession of the divinity of Christ; while they hold Christ to be, in the highest sense, the divine ground and rock of the church. And herein lies a solution of their apparent self-contradiction in referring the petra in Matt. xvi. 18, now to the person of Peter, now to his confession, now to Christ. Then, as the bishops in general were regarded as successors of the apostles, the fathers saw in the Roman bishops, on the ground of the ancient tradition of the martyrdom of Peter in Rome, the successor of Peter and the heir of the primacy. But respecting the nature and prerogatives of this primacy their views were very indefinite and various. It is remarkable that the reference of the rock to Christ, which Augustine especially defended with great earnestness, was acknowledged even by the greatest pope of the middle ages, Gregory VII., in the famous inscription he sent with a crown to the emperor Rudolph: “Petra [i.e., Christ] dedit Petro [i.e., to the apostle], Petrus [the pope] diadema Rudolpho.”

Baronius, Annal. ad ann. 1080, vol. xi. p. 704.

1. The views of the Latin fathers.

The Cyprianic idea was developed primarily in North Africa, where it was first clearly pronounced.

Optatus, bishop of Milevi, the otherwise unknown author of an anti-Donatist work about a.d. 384, is, like Cyprian, thoroughly possessed with the idea of the visible unity of the church; declares it without qualification the highest good, and sees its plastic expression and its surest safeguard in the immovable cathedra Petri, the prince of the apostles, the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, who, in spite of his denial of Christ, continued in that relation to the other apostles, that the unity of the church might appear in outward fact as an unchangeable thing, invulnerable to human offence. All these prerogatives have passed to the bishops of Rome, as the successors of this apostle.

De schismate Donatistarum, lib. ii. cap. 2, 3, and l. vii. 3. The work was composed while Siricius was bishop of Rome, hence about 384.

Ambrose of Milan († 397) speaks indeed in very high terms of the Roman church, and concedes to its bishops a religious magistracy like the political power of the emperors of pagan Rome;

Ambr. Sermo ii. in festo Petri et Pauli: “In urbe Romae, quae principatum et caput obtinet nationum: scilicet ut ubi caput superstitionis erat, illic caput quiesceret sanctitatis, et ubi gentilium principes habitabant, illic ecclesiarum principes morerentur.” In Ps. 40: “Ipse est Petrus cui dixit: Tu es Petrus ... ubi ergo Patrus, ibi ecclesia; ubi ecclesia, ibi mulla mors, sed vita eterna.” Comp. the poetic passage in his Morning Hymn, in the citation from Augustinefurther on. But in another passage he likewise refers the rock to Christ, in Luc. ix. 20: “Petra est Christus,” etc.

Jerome († 419), the most learned commentator among the Latin fathers, vacillates in his explanation of the petra; now, like Augustine, referring it to Christ,

Hieron. in Amos, vi. 12: “Petra Christus est qui donavit apostolis suis, ut ipsi quoque petrae vocentur.” And in another place: “Ecclesia Catholica super Petram Christum stabili radici fundata est.”

Augustine († 430), the greatest theological authority of the Latin church, at first referred the words, “On this rock I will build my church,” to the person of Peter, but afterward expressly retracted this interpretation, and considered the petra to be Christ, on the ground of a distinction between petra (ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ) and Petrus (σὺ εἷ Πέτρος); a distinction which Jerome also makes, though with the intimation that it is not properly applicable to the Hebrew and Syriac Cephas.

Hier. Com. in Ep. ad Galat. ii. 11, 12 (ed. Vallars. tom. vii. col. 409): “Non quod aliud significat Petrus, aliudCephas, sed quo quam nos Latine et Graece petram vocemus, hanc Hebraei et Syri, propter linguae inter se viciniam, Cephan, nuncupent.”

’Hoc ipsa petra ecclesiae

Canente, culpam diluit.’

In the Ambrosian Morning Hymn: “Aeterne rerum conditor.”

(The Rock of the church himself

In the cock-crowing atones his guilt.)

But I know that I have since frequently said, that the word of the Lord, ’Thou art Petrus, and on this petra I will build my church,’ must be understood of him, whom Peter confessed as Son of the living God; and Peter, so named after this rock, represents the person of the church, which is founded on this rock and has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. For it was not said to him: ’Thou art a rock’ (petra), but, ’Thou art Peter’ (Petrus); and the rock was Christ, through confession of whom Simon received the name of Peter. Yet the reader may decide which of the two interpretations is the more probable.” In the same strain he says, in another place: “Peter, in virtue of the primacy of his apostolate, stands, by a figurative generalization, for the church .... When it was said to him, ’I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’ &c., he represented the whole church, which in this world is assailed by various temptations, as if by floods and storms, yet does not fall, because it is founded upon a rock, from which Peter received his name. For the rock is not so named from Peter, but Peter from the rock (non enim a Petro petra, sed Petrus a petra), even as Christ is not so called after the Christian, but the Christian after Christ. For the reason why the Lord says, ’On this rock I will build my church’ is that Peter had said: ’Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ On this rock, which then hast confessed, says he will build my church. For Christ was the rock (petra enim erat Christus), upon which also Peter himself was built; for other foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Thus the church, which is built upon Christ, has received from him, in the person of Peter, the keys of heaven; that is, the power of binding and loosing sins.”

Tract. in Evang. Joannis, 124, § 5. The original is quoted among others by Dr. Gieseler, i. 2, p. 210 (4th ed.), but with a few unessential omissions.

The later Latin fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries prefer the reference of the petra to Peter and his confession, and transfer his prerogatives to the Roman bishops as his successors, but produce no new arguments. Among them we mention Maximus of Turin (about 450), who, however, like Ambrose, places Paul on a level with Peter;

Hom. v., on the feast of Peter and Paul. To the one, says he, the keys of knowledge were committed, to the other the keys of power.” Eminent inter universos apostlos et peculiari quadam praerogativa praecellunt. Verum inter ipsos quis cui praeponatur, incertum est.” The same sentence in Ambrose, De Spir. S. ii. 12.

2. As to the Greek fathers: Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Basil, the two Gregories, Ephraim, Syrus, Asterius, Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom, and Theodoret refer the petra now to the confession, now to the person, of Peter; sometimes to both. They speak of this apostle uniformly in very lofty terms, at times in rhetorical extravagance, calling him the “coryphaeus of the choir of apostles,” the prince of the apostles,” the “tongue of the apostles,” the “bearer of the keys,” the “keeper of the kingdom of heaven,” the “pillar,” the “rock,” the “firm foundation of the church.” But, in the first place, they understand by all this simply an honorary primacy of Peter, to whom that power was but first committed, which the Lord afterward conferred on all the apostles alike; and, in the second place, they by no means favor an exclusive transfer of this prerogative to the bishop of Rome, but claim it also for the bishops of Antioch, where Peter, according to Gal. ii., sojourned a long time, and where, according to tradition, he was bishop, and appointed a successor.

So Chrysostom, for instance, calls Ignatius of Antioch a “successor of Peter, on whom, after Peter, the government of the church devolved,”

In S. Ignat. Martyr., n. 4.

Theodoret also, who, like Chrysostom, proceeded from the Antiochian school, says of the “great city of Antioch,” that it has the “throne of Peter.”

Epist. 86.

His bitter antagonist also, the arrogant and overbearing Cyril of Alexandria, descended some years before, in his battle against Nestorius, to unworthy flattery, and called Pope Coelestine “the archbishop of the whole [Roman] world.”

Ἀρχιεπίσκοπον πάσης τῆς οἰκουμένης [i. e., of the Roman empire, according to the well-known usus loquendi, even of the N. T., Comp. Luke ii. 1], πατέρα τε καὶ πατριάρχην Κελεστῖνον τὸν τῆς μεγαλοπόλεως Ρώμης. Encom. in S. Mar. Deip. (tom. v. p. 384). Comp. his Ep. ix. ad Coelest.

§ 62. The Decrees of Councils on the Papal Authority.

Much more important than the opinions of individual fathers are the formal decrees of the councils.

First mention here belongs to the council of Sardica in Illyria (now Sofia in Bulgaria) in 343,

That this is the true date appears from the recently discovered Festival Epistles of Athanasius, published in Syriac by Cureton (London, 1848), in an English translation by Williams (Oxford, 1854), and in German by Larsow (Leipzig, 1852). Mansi puts the council in the year 344, but most writers, including Gieseler, Neander, Milman, and Greenwood, following the erroneous statement of Socrates (ii. 20) and Sozomen (iii. 12), place it in the year 347. Comp. on the subject Larsow, Die Festbriefe des Athanasius, p. 31; and Hefele, Conciliengesch. i. p. 513 sqq.

(1) That a deposed bishop, who feels he has a good cause, may apply, out of reverence to the memory of the apostle Peter, to the Roman bishop Julius, and shall leave it with him either to ratify the deposition or to summon a new council.

(2) That the vacant bishopric shall not be filled till the decision of Rome be received.

(3) That the Roman bishop, in such a case of appeal, may, according to his best judgment, either institute a new trial by the bishops of a neighboring province, or send delegates to the spot with full power to decide the matter with the bishops.

Can. 3, 4, and 5 (in the Latin translation, can. 3, 4, and 7), in Mansi, iii. 23 sq., and in Hefele, i. 539 sqq., where the Greek and the Latin Dionysian text is given with learned explanations. The Greek and Latin texts differ in some points.

Thus was plainly committed to the Roman bishops an appellate and revisory jurisdiction in the case of a condemned or deposed bishop even of the East. But in the first place this authority is not here acknowledged as a right already existing in practice. It is conferred as a new power, and that merely as an honorary right, and as pertaining only to the bishop Julius in person.

So the much discussed canones are explained not only by Protestant historians, but also by Catholic of the Gallican school, like Peter de Marca, Quesnel, Du-Pin, Richer, Febronius. This interpretation agrees best with the whole connection; with the express mention of Julius (which is lacking indeed, in the Latin translation of Prisca and in Isidore, but stands distinctly in the Greek and Dionysian texts: Ἰουλίῳ τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ Ῥώμης, Julio Romano episcopo); with the words, ” Si vobis placet” (can. 3), whereby the appeal in question is made dependent first on the decree of this council; and finally, with the words, “Sancti Petri apostoli memoriam honoremus,” which represent the Roman bishop’s right of review as an honorary matter. What Hefele urges against these arguments (i. 548 sq.), seems to me very insufficient.

Finally, in regard to the four great ecumenical councils, the first of Nice, the first of Constantinople, that of Ephesus, and that of Chalcedon: we have already presented their position on this question in connection with their legislation on the patriarchal system.

Comp. § 56.

It is, therefore, an undeniable historical fact, that the greatest dogmatic and legislative authorities of the ancient church bear as decidedly against the specific papal claims of the Roman bishopric, is in favor of its patriarchal rights and an honorary primacy in the patriarchal oligarchy. The subsequent separation of the Greek church from the Latin proves to this day, that she was never willing to sacrifice her independence to Rome, or to depart from the decrees of her own greatest councils.

Here lies the difference, however, between the Greek and the Protestant opposition to the universal monarchy of the papacy. The Greek church protested against it from the basis of the oligarchical patriarchal hierarchy of the fifth century; in an age, therefore, and upon a principle of church organization, which preceded the grand agency of the papacy in the history of the world. The evangelical church protests against it on the basis of a freer conception of Christianity, seeing in the papacy an institution, which indeed formed the legitimate development of the patriarchal system, and was necessary for the training of the Romanic and Germanic Nations of the middle ages, but which has virtually fulfilled its mission and outlived itself. The Greek church never had a papacy; the evangelical historically implies one. The papacy stands between the age of the patriarchal hierarchy and the age of the Reformation, like the Mosaic theocracy between the patriarchal period and the advent of Christianity. Protestantism rejects at once the papal monarchy and the patriarchal oligarchy, and thus can justify the former as well as the latter for a certain time and a certain stage in the progress of the Christian world.

§ 63. Leo the Great. a.d. 440–461.

I. St. Leo Magnus: Opera omnia (sermones et epistolae), ed. Paschas. Quesnel., Par. 1675, 2 vols. 4to. (Gallican, and defending Hilary against Leo, hence condemned by the Roman Index); and ed. Petr. et Hieron. Ballerini (two very learned brothers and presbyters, who wrote at the request of Pope Benedict XIV.), Venet. 1753–1757, 3 vols. fol. (Vol. i. contains 96 Sermons and 173 Epistles, the two other volumes doubtful writings and learned dissertations.) This edition is reprinted in Migne’s Patrologiae Cursus completus, vol. 54–57, Par. 1846.

II. Acta Sanctorum: sub Apr. 11 (Apr. tom. ii. p. 14–30, brief and unsatisfactory). Tillemont: Mem. t. xv. p. 414–832 (very full). Butler: Lives of the Saints, sub Apr. 11. W. A. Arendt (R.C.): Leo der Grosse u. seine Zeit, Mainz, 1835 (apologetic and panegyric). Edw. Perthel: P. Leo’s I. Leben u. Lehren, Jena, 1843 (Protestant). Fr. Boehringer: Die Kirche Christi u. ihre Zeugen, Zürich, 1846, vol. i. div. 4, p. 170–309. Ph. Jaffé: Regesta Pontif. Rom., Berol. 1851, p. 34 sqq. Comp. also Greenwood: Cathedra Petri, Lond. 1859, vol. i. bk. ii. chap. iv.-vi. (The Leonine Period); and H. H. Milman: Hist. of Latin Christianity, Lond. and New York, 1860, vol. i. bk. ii. ch. iv.

In most of the earlier bishops of Rome the person is eclipsed by the office. The spirit of the age and public opinion rule the bishops, not the bishops them. In the preceding period, Victor in the controversy on Easter, Callistus in that on the restoration of the lapsed, and Stephen in that on heretical baptism, were the first to come out with hierarchical arrogance; but they were somewhat premature, and found vigorous resistance in Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Cyprian, though on all three questions the Roman view at last carried the day.

In the period before us, Damasus, who subjected Illyria to the Roman jurisdiction, and established the authority of the Vulgate, and Siricius, who issued the first genuine decretal letter, trod in the steps of those predecessors. Innocent I. (402–417) took a step beyond, and in the Pelagian controversy ventured the bold assertion, that in the whole Christian world nothing should be decided without the cognizance of the Roman see, and that, especially in matters of faith, all bishops must turn to St. Peter.

Ep. ad Conc. Cartha. and Ep. ad Concil. Milev., both in 416. In reference to this decision, which went against Pelagius, Augustineuttered the word so often quoted by Roman divines: ”Causa finita est; utinam aliquando finiatur error.” But when Zosimus, the successor of Innocent, took the part of Pelagius, Augustineand the African church boldly opposed him, and made use of the Cyprianic right of protest.“Circumstances alter cases.”

But the first pope, in the proper sense of the word, is Leo I., who justly bears the title of “the Great” in the history of the Latin hierarchy. In him the idea of the Papacy, as it were, became flesh and blood. He conceived it in great energy and clearness, and carried it out with the Roman spirit of dominion, so far as the circumstances of the time at all allowed. He marks the same relative epoch in the development of the papacy, as Cyprian in the history of the episcopate. He had even a higher idea of the prerogatives of the see of Rome than Gregory the Great, who, though he reigned a hundred and fifty years later, represents rather the patriarchal idea than the papal. Leo was at the same time the first important theologian in the chair of Rome, surpassing in acuteness and depth of thought all his predecessors, and all his successors down to Gregory I. Benedict XIV. placed him (a.d. 1744) in the small class of doctores ecclesiae, or authoritative teachers of the catholic faith. He battled with the Manichaean, the Priscillianist, the Pelagian, and other heresies, and won an immortal name as the finisher of the orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ.

The time and place of the birth and earlier life of Leo are unknown. His letters, which are the chief source of information, commence not before the year 442. Probably a Roman

As Quesnel and most of his successors infer from Prosper’s Chronicle, and a passage in Leo’s Ep. 31, c. 4, where he assigns among the reasons for not attending the council at Ephesus in 449, that he could not “deserere patriam et sedem apostolicam.” Patria, however, may as well mean Italy, or at least the diocese of Rome, including the ten suburbican provinces. In the Liber pontificalis he is called “natione Tuscus,“ but in two manuscript copies, “natione Romanus.” Canisius, in the Acta Sanctorum, adopts the former view. Butler reconciles the difficulty by supposing that he was descended of a noble Tuscan family, but born at Rome.

During the time of his pontificate he was almost the only great man in the Roman empire, developed extraordinary activity, and took a leading part in all the affairs of the church. His private life is entirely unknown, and we have no reason to question the purity of his motives or of his morals. His official zeal, and all his time and strength, were devoted to the interests of Christianity. But with him the interests of Christianity were identical with the universal dominion of the Roman church.

He was animated with the unwavering conviction that the Lord himself had committed to him, as the successor of Peter, the care of the whole church.

Ep. v. ad Episcopos Metrop. per Illyricum constitutos, c. 2 (ed. Ball. i. 617, in Migne’s Patristic Libr. vol. liv. p. 515): “Quia per omnes ecclesias cura nostra distenditur, exigente hoc a nobis Domino, qui apostolicae dignitatis beatissimo apostolo Petro primatum fidei suae remuneratione commisit, universalem ecclesiam in fundamenti ipsius [Quesnel proposes istius for ipsius] soliditate constituens, necessitatem sollicitudinis quam habemus, cum his qui nobis collegii caritate juncti sunt, sociamus.”

Leo thus made out of a primacy of grace and of personal fitness a primacy of right and of succession. Of his person, indeed, he speaks in his sermons with great humility, but only thereby the more to exalt his official character. He tells the Romans, that the true celebration of the anniversary of his accession is, to recognize, honor, and obey, in his lowly person, Peter himself, who still cares for shepherd and flock, and whose dignity is not lacking even to his unworthy heir.

 “Cujus dignitas etiam in indigno haerede non deficit,” Sermo iii. in Natal, ordin. c. 4 (vol. i. p. 13, ed. Ball.).“Etsi necessarium est trepidare de merito, religiosum est tamen gaudere de dono: quoniam qui mihi oneris est auctor, ipse est administrationis adjutor.” Serm. ii. c. 1.

In carrying his idea of the papacy into effect, Leo displayed the cunning tact, the diplomatic address, and the iron consistency which characterize the greatest popes of the middle age. The circumstances in general were in his favor: the East rent by dogmatic controversies; Africa devastated by the barbarians; the West weak in a weak emperor; nowhere a powerful and pure bishop or divine, like Athanasius, Augustine, or Jerome, in the former generation; the overthrow of the Western empire at hand; a new age breaking, with new peoples, for whose childhood the papacy was just the needful school; the most numerous and last important general council convened; and the system of ecumenical orthodoxy ready to be closed with the decision concerning the relation of the two natures in Christ.

Leo first took advantage of the distractions of the North African church under the Arian Vandals, and wrote to its bishops in the tone of an acknowledged over-shepherd. Under the stress of the times, and in the absence of a towering, character like Cyprian and Augustine, the Africans submitted to his authority (443). He banished the remnants of the Manichaeans and Pelagians from Italy, and threatened the bishops with his anger, if they should not purge their churches of the heresy. In East Illyrian which was important to Rome as the ecclesiastical outpost toward Constantinople, he succeeded in regaining and establishing the supremacy, which had been acquired by Damasus, but had afterward slipped away. Anastasius of Thessalonica applied to him to be confirmed in his office. Leo granted the prayer in 444, extending the jurisdiction of Anastasius over all the Illyrian bishops, but reserving to them a right of appeal in important cases, which ought to be decided by the pope according to divine revelation. And a case to his purpose soon presented itself, in which Leo brought his vicar to feel that he was called indeed to a participation of his care, but not to a plentitude of power (plenitudo potestatis). In the affairs of the Spanish church also Leo had an opportunity to make his influence felt, when Turibius, bishop of Astorga, besought his intervention against the Priscillianists. He refuted these heretics point by point, and on the basis of his exposition the Spaniards drew up an orthodox regula fidei with eighteen anathemas against the Priscillianist error.

But in Gaul he met, as we have already, seen, with a strenuous antagonist in Hilary of Arles, and, though he called the secular power to his aid, and procured from the emperor Valentinian an edict entirely favorable to his claims, he attained but a partial victory.

Comp. above, § 59.

Besides thus shaping the polity and doctrine of the church, Leo did immortal service to the city of Rome, in twice rescuing it from destruction.

Comp. Pertbel, l.c. p. 90 sqq., and p. 104 sqq.

Leo died in 461, and was buried in the church of St. Peter. The day and circumstances of his death are unknown.

The Roman calendar places his name on the 11th of April. But different writers fix his death on June 28, Oct. 30 (Quesnel), Nov. 4 (Pagi), Nov. 10 (Butler). Butler quotes the concession of Bower, the apostate Jesuit, who, in his Lives of the Popes, says of Leo, that “he was without doubt a man of extraordinary parts, far superior to all who had governed that church before him, and scarce equalled by any since.”

The literary works of Leo consist of ninety-six sermons and one hundred and seventy-three epistles, including epistles of others to him. They are earnest, forcible, full of thought, churchly, abounding in bold antitheses and allegorical freaks of exegesis, and sometimes heavy, turgid, and obscure in style. His collection of sermons is the first we have from a Roman bishops In his inaugural discourse he declared preaching to be his sacred duty. The sermons are short and simple, and were delivered mostly on high festivals and on the anniversaries of his own elevation.

Sermones de natali. Canisius (in Acta Sanct., l.c. p. 17) calls Leo Christianum Demosthenem.

§ 64. The Papacy from Leo I to Gregory I. a.d. 461–590.

The first Leo and the first Gregory are the two greatest bishops of Rome in the first six centuries. Between them no important personage appears on the chair of Peter; and in the course of that intervening century the idea and the power of the papacy make no material advance. In truth, they went farther in Leo’s mind than they did in Gregory’s. Leo thought and acted as an absolute monarch; Gregory as first among the patriarchs; but both under the full conviction that they were the successors of Peter.

After the death of Leo, the archdeacon Hilary, who had represented him at the council of Ephesus, was elected to his place, and ruled (461–468) upon his principles, asserting the strict orthodoxy in the East and the authority of the primacy in Gaul.

His successor, Simplicius (468–483), saw the final dissolution of the empire under Romulus Augustulus (476), but, as he takes not the slightest notice of it in his epistles, he seems to have ascribed to it but little importance. The papal power had been rather favored than hindered in its growth by the imbecility of the latest emperors. Now, to a certain extent, it stepped into the imperial vacancy, and the successor of Peter became, in the mind of the Western nations, sole heir of the old Roman imperial succession.

On the fall of the empire the pope became the political subject of the barbarian and heretical (for they were Arian) kings; but these princes, as most of the heathen emperors had done, allowed him, either from policy, or from ignorance or indifference, entire freedom in ecclesiastical affairs. In Italy the Catholics had by far the ascendency in numbers and in culture. And the Arianism of the new rulers was rather an outward profession than an inward conviction. Odoacer, who first assumed the kingdom of Italy (476–493), was tolerant toward the orthodox faith, yet attempted to control the papal election in 483 in the interest of the state, and prohibited, under penalty of the anathema, the alienation of church property by any bishop. Twenty years later a Roman council protested against this intervention of a layman, and pronounced the above prohibition null and void, but itself passed a similar decree against the alienation of church estates.

This was the fifth (al. fourth) council under, Symmachus, held in Nov. 502, therefore later than the synodus palmaris. Comp. Hefele, ii. p. 625 sq.

Pope Felix II., or, according to another reckoning,III. (483–492), continued the war of his predecessor against the Monophysitism of the East, rejected the Henoticon of the emperor Zeno, as an unwarrantable intrusion of a layman in matters of faith, and ventured even the excommunication of the bishop Acacius of Constantinople. Acacius replied with a counter anathema, with the support of the other Eastern patriarchs; and the schism between the two churches lasted over thirty years, to the pontificate of Hormisdas.

Gelasius I. (492–496) clearly announced the principle, that the priestly power is above the kingly and the imperial, and that from the decisions of the chair of Peter there is no appeal. Yet from this pope we have, on the other hand, a remarkable testimony against what he pronounces the “sacrilege” of withholding the cup from the laity, the communio sub una specie.

Anastasius II. (496–498) indulged in a milder tone toward Constantinople, and incurred the suspicion of consent to its heresy.

. Dante puts him in hell, and Baronius ascribes his sudden death to an evident judgment of God.

His sudden death was followed by a contested papal election, which led to bloody encounters. The Ostrogothic king Theodoric (the Dietrich of Bern in the Niebelungenlied), the conqueror and master of Italy (493–526), and, like Odoacer, an Arian, was called into consultation in this contest, and gave his voice for Symmachus against Laurentius, because Symmachus had received the majority of votes, and had been consecrated first. But the party of Laurentius, not satisfied with this, raised against Symmachus the reproach of gross iniquities, even of adultery and of squandering the church estates. The bloody scenes were renewed, priests were murdered, cloisters were burned, and nuns were insulted. Theodoric, being again called upon by the senate for a decision, summoned a council at Rome, to which Symmachus gave his consent; and a synod, convoked by a heretical king, must decide upon the pope! In the course of the controversy several councils were held in rapid succession, the chronology of which is disputed.

Comp. Hefele, ii. p. 615 sqq.

Under Hormisdas (514–523) the Monophysite party in the Greek church was destroyed by the energetic zeal of the orthodox emperor Justin, and in 519 the union of that church with Rome was restored, after a schism of five-and-thirty years.

Theodoric offered no hinderance to the transactions and embassies, and allowed his most distinguished subject to assert his ecclesiastical supremacy over Constantinople. This semi-barbarous and heretical prince was tolerant in general, and very liberal toward the Catholic church; even rising to the principle, which has waited till the modern age for its recognition, that the power of the prince should be restricted to civil government, and should permit no trespass on the conscience of its subjects.” No one,” says he, “shall be forced to believe against his will.”  Yet, toward the close of his reign, on mere political suspicion, he ordered the execution of the celebrated philosopher Boethius, with whom the old Roman literature far more worthily closes, than the Roman empire with Augustulus; and on the same ground he caused the death of the senator Symmachus and the incarceration of Pope John I. (523–526).

Almost the last act of his reign was the nomination of the worthy Felix III. (IV.) to the papal chair, after a protracted struggle of contending parties. With the appointment he issued the order that hereafter, as heretofore, the pope should be elected by clergy and people, but should be confirmed by the temporal prince before assuming his office; and with this understanding the clergy and the city gave their consent to the nomination.

Yet, in spite of this arrangement, in the election of Boniface II. (530–532) and John II. (532–535) the same disgraceful quarrelling and briberies occurred;—a sort of chronic disease in the history of the papacy.

Soon after the death of Theodoric (526) the Gothic empire fell to pieces through internal distraction and imperial weakness. Italy was conquered by Belisarius (535), and, with Africa, again incorporated with the East Roman empire, which renewed under Justinian its ancient splendor, and enjoyed a transient after-summer. And yet this powerful, orthodox emperor was a slave to the intriguing, heretical Theodora, whom he had raised from the theatre to the throne; and Belisarius likewise, his victorious general, was completely under the power of his wife Antonina.

With the conquest of Italy the popes fell into a perilous and unworthy dependence on the emperor at Constantinople, who reverenced, indeed, the Roman chair, but not less that of Constantinople, and in reality sought to use both as tools of his own state-church despotism. Agapetus (535–536) offered fearless resistance to the arbitrary course of Justinian, and successfully protested against the elevation of the Eutychian Anthimus to the patriarchal see of Constantinople. But, by the intrigues of the Monophysite empress, his successor, Pope Silverius (a son of Hormisdas, 536–538), was deposed on the charge of treasonable correspondence with the Goths, and banished to the island of Pandataria, whither the worst heathen emperors used to send the victims of their tyranny, and where in 540 he died—whether a natural or a violent death, we do not know.

Vigilius, a pliant creature of Theodora, ascended the papal chair under the military protection of Belisarius (538–554). The empress had promised him this office and a sum of money, on condition that he nullify the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, and pronounce Anthimus and his friends orthodox. The ambitious and doubled-tongued prelate accepted the condition, and accomplished the deposition, and perhaps the death, of Silverius. In his pontificate occurred the violent controversy of the three chapters and the second general council of Constantinople (553). His administration was an unprincipled vacillation between the dignity and duties of his office and subservience to an alien theological and political influence; between repeated condemnation of the three chapters in behalf of a Eutychianizing spirit, and repeated retraction of that condemnation. In Constantinople, where he resided several years at the instance of the emperor, he suffered much personal persecution, but without the spirit of martyrdom, and without its glory. For example, at least according to Western accounts, he was violently torn from the altar, upon which he was holding with both hands so firmly that the posts of the canopy fell in above him; he was dragged through the streets with a rope around his neck, and cast into a common prison; because he would not submit to the will of Justinian and his council. Yet he yielded at last, through fear of deposition. He obtained permission to return to Rome, but died in Sicily, of the stone, on his way thither (554).

Pelagius I. (554–560), by order of Justinian, whose favor he had previously gained as papal legate at Constantinople, was made successor of Vigilius, but found only two bishops ready to consecrate him. His close connection with the East, and his approval of the fifth ecumenical council, which was regarded as a partial concession to the Eutychian Christology, and, so far, an impeachment of the authority of the council of Chalcedon, alienated many Western bishops, even in Italy, and induced a temporary suspension of their connection with Rome. He issued a letter to the whole Christian world, in which he declared his entire agreement with the first four general councils, and then vindicated the fifth as in no way departing from the Chalcedonian dogma. But only by the military aid of Narses could he secure subjection; and the most refractory bishops, those of Aquileia and Milan, he sent as prisoners to Constantinople.

In these two Justinian-made popes we see how much the power of the Roman hierarchy was indebted to its remoteness from the Byzantine despotism, and how much it was injured by contact with it.

With the descent of the Arian Longobards into Italy, after 668, the popes again became more independent of the Byzantine court. They continued under tribute indeed to the ex-archs in Ravenna, as the representatives of the Greek emperors (from 554), and were obliged to have their election confirmed and their inauguration superintended by them. But the feeble hold of these officials in Italy, and the pressure of the Arian barbarians upon them, greatly favored the popes, who, being the richest proprietors, enjoyed also great political consideration in Italy, and applied their influence to the maintenance of law and order amidst the reigning confusion.

In other respects the administrations of John III. (560–573), Benedict I. (574–578), and Pelagius II. (578–590), are among the darkest and the most sterile in the annals of the papacy.

But with Gregory I. (590–604) a new period begins. Next to Leo I. he was the greatest of the ancient bishops of Rome, and he marks the transition of the patriarchal system into the strict papacy of the middle ages. For several reasons we prefer to place him at the head of the succeeding period. He came, it is true, with more modest claims than Leo, who surpassed him in boldness, energy, and consistency. He even solemnly protested, as his predecessor Pelagius II. had done, against the title of universal bishop, which the Constantinopolitan patriarch, John Jejunator, adopted at a council in 587;

Even Justinian repeatedly applied to the patriarch of Constantinople officially the title οἰκομενικὸς πατριάρχης, universalis patriarcha.

§ 65. The Synodical System. The Ecumenical Councils.

I. The principal sources are the Acts of the Councils, the best and most complete collections of which are those of the Jesuit Sirmond (Rom. 1608–1612, 4 vols. fol.); the so-called Collectio regia (Paris, 1644, 37 vols. fol.; a copy of it in the Astor Libr., New York); but especially those of the Jesuit Hardouin († 1729): Collectio maxima Conciliorum generalium et provincialium (Par. 1715 sqq., 12 vols. fol.), coming down to 1714, and very available through its five copious indexes (tom. i. and ii. embrace the first six centuries; a copy of it, from Van Ess’s library, in the Union Theol. Sem. Library, at New York); and the Italian Joannes Dominicus Mansi (archbishop of Lucca, died 1769): Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collection, Florence, 1759-’98, in 31 (30) vols. fol. This is the most complete and the best collection down to the fifteenth century, but unfinished, and therefore without general indexes; tom. i. contains the Councils from the beginning of Christianity to a.d. 304; tom. ii.-ix. include our period to a.d. 590 (I quote from an excellent copy of this rare collection in the Union Theol. Sem. Libr., at New York, 30 t. James Darling, in his Cyclop. Bibliographica, p. 740–756, gives the list of the contents of an earlier edition of the Councils by Nic. Coleti, Venet., 1728, in 23 vols., with a supplement of Mansi, in 6 vols. 1748-’52, which goes down to 1727, while the new edition of Mansi only reaches to 1509. Brunet, in the “Manuel Du Libraire,” quotes the edition of Mansi, Florence, 1759–1798, with the remark: “Cette collection, dont le dernier volume s’arrête à l’année 1509, est peu commune à Paris ou elle revenait à 600 fr.”  Strictly speaking its stops in the middle of the 15th century, except in a few documents which reach further.) Useful abstracts are the Summa Conciliorum of Barth. Caranza, in many editions; and in the German language, the Bibliothek der Kirchenversammlungen (4th and 5th centuries), by Fuchs, Leipz., 1780–1784, 4 vols.

II. Chr. Wilh. Franz Walch (Luth.): Entwurf einer vollstaendigen Historie der Kirchenversammlungen, Leipz., 1759. Edw. H. Landon (Anglic.): A manual of Councils of the Holy Catholick Church, comprising the substance of the most remarkable and important canons, alphabetically arranged, 12mo. London, 1846. C. J. Hefele (R.C.): Conciliengeshichte, Freiburg, 1855–1863, 5 vols. (a very valuable work, not yet finished; vol. v. comes down to a.d. 1250). Comp. my Essay on Oekumenische Concilien, in Dorner’s Annals of Ger. Theol. vol. viii. 326–346.

Above the patriarchs, even above the patriarch of Rome, stood the ecumenical or general councils,

The name σύνοδος οἰκουμενική(concilium universale, s. generale) occurs first in the sixth canon of the council of Constantinople in 381. The οἰκουμένη (sc. γῆ) is, properly, the whole inhabited earth; then, in a narrower sense, the earth inhabited by Greeks, in distinction from the barbarian countries; finally, with the Romans, the orbis Romanus, the political limits of which coincided with those of the ancient Graeco-Latin church. But as the bishops of the barbarians outside the empire were admitted, the ecumenical councils represented the entire Catholic Christian world.

The synodical system in general had its rise in the apostolic council at Jerusalem,

Acts xv., and Gal. ii. Comp. my History of the Apostolic Church, §§ 67-69 (Engl. ed., p. 245-257). Mansi, l.c. tom. i. p. 22 (De quadruplici Synodo Apostolorum), and other Roman Catholic writers, speak of four Apostolic Synods: Acts i. 13 sqq., for the election of an apostle; ch. vi. for the election of deacons; ch. xv. for the settlement of the question of the binding authority of the law of Moses; and ch. xxi. for a similar object. But we should distinguish between a private conference and consultation, and a public synod.

In the earlier centuries the councils assembled without fixed regularity, at the instance of present necessities, like the Montanist and the Easter controversies in the latter part of the second century. Firmilian of Cappadocia, in his letter to Cyprian, first mentions, that at his time, in the middle of the third century, the churches of Asia Minor held regular annual synods, consisting of bishops and presbyters. From that time we find an increasing number of such assemblies in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, and Gaul. The council of Nicaea, a.d. 325, ordained, in the fifth canon, that the provincial councils should meet twice a year: during the fast season before Easter, and in the fall.

A similar order, with different times, appears still earlier in the 37th of the apostolic canons, where it is said (in the ed. of Ueltzen, p. 244):Δεύτεροντοῦ ἔτους σύνοδος γενέσθω τῶν ἐπισκόπων.

The Ecumenical councils were not stated, but extraordinary assemblies, occasioned by the great theological controversies of the ancient church. They could not arise until after the conversion of the Roman emperor and the ascendancy of Christianity as the religion of the state. They were the highest, and the last, manifestation of the power of the Greek church, which in general took the lead in the first age of Christianity, and was the chief seat of all theological activity. Hence in that church, as well as in others, they are still held in the highest veneration, and kept alive in the popular mind by pictures in the churches. The Greek and Russian Christians have annually commemorated the seven ecumenical councils, since the year 842, on the first Sunday in Lent, as the festival of the triumph of orthodoxy

This Sunday, the celebration of which was ordered by the empress Theodora in 842, is called among the Greeks the κυριακήτῆς ὀρθοδοξίας. On that day the ancient councils are dramatically reproduced in the public worship.

Strictly speaking, none of these councils properly represented the entire Christian world. Apart from the fact that the laity, and even the lower clergy, were excluded from them, the assembled bishops themselves formed but a small part of the Catholic episcopate. The province of North Africa alone numbered many more bishops than were present at either the second, the third, or the fifth general council.

The schismatical Donatists alone held a council at Carthage in 308, of two hundred and seventy bishops (Comp. Wiltsch, Kirchl. Geogr. u. Statistik, i. p. 53 and 54); while the second ecumenical council numbered only a hundred and fifty, the third a hundred and sixty (a hundred and ninety-eight), and the fifth a hundred and sixty-four.

It is, therefore, not the number of bishops present, nor even the regularity of the summons alone, which determines the ecumenical character of a council, but the result, the importance and correctness of the decisions, and, above all, the consent of the orthodox Christian world.

Schröckh says (vol. viii. p. 201), unjustly, that this general consent belongs among the “empty conceits.” Of course the unanimity must be limited to orthodox Christendom.

The number of the councils thus raised by the public opinion of the Greek and Latin churches to the ecumenical dignity, is seven. The succession begins with the first council of Nicaea, in the year 325, which settled the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and condemned the Arian heresy. It closes with the second council of Nice, in 787, which sanctioned the use of images in the church. The first four of these councils command high theological regard in the orthodox Evangelical churches, while the last three are less important and far more rarely mentioned.

The ecumenical councils have not only an ecclesiastical significance, but bear also a political or state-church character. The very name refers to the οἰκουμένη, the orbis Romanus, the empire. Such synods were rendered possible only by that great transformation, which is marked by the accession of Constantine. That emperor caused the assembling of the first ecumenical council, though the idea was probably suggested to him by friends among the bishops; at least Rufinus says, he summoned the council “ex sacerdotum sententia.” At all events the Christian Graeco-Roman emperor is indispensable to an ecumenical council in the ancient sense of the term; its temporal head and its legislative strength.

According to the rigid hierarchical or papistic theory, as carried out in the middle ages, and still asserted by Roman divines, the pope alone, as universal head of the church, can summon, conduct, and confirm a universal council. But the history of the first seven, or, as the Roman reckoning is, eight, ecumenical councils, from 325 to 867, assigns this threefold power to the Byzantine emperors. This is placed beyond all contradiction, by the still extant edicts of the emperors, the acts of the councils, the accounts of all the Greek historians, and the contemporary Latin sources. Upon this Byzantine precedent, and upon the example of the kings of Israel, the Russian Czars and the Protestant princes of Germany, Scandinavia, and England—be it justly or unjustly—build their claim to a similar and still more extended supervision of the church in their dominions.

In the first place, the call of the ecumenical councils emanated from the emperors.

This is conceded even by the Roman Catholic church historian Hefele (i. p. 7), in opposition to, Bellarmine and other Romish divines.“The first eight general councils,” says he, “were appointed and convoked by the emperors; all the subsequent councils, on the contrary [i.e. all the Roman Catholic general councils], by the popes; but even in those first councils there appears a certain participation of the popes in their convocation, more or less prominent in particular instances.” The latter assertion is too sweeping, and can by no means be verified in the history of the first two of these councils, nor of the fifth.

In the second place, the emperors, directly or indirectly, took an active part in all but two of the ecumenical councils summoned by them, and held the presidency. Constantine the Great, Marcian, and his wife Pulcheria, Constantine Progonatus, Irene, and Basil the Macedonian, attended in person; but generally the emperors, like the Roman bishops (who were never present themselves), were represented by delegates or commissioners, clothed with full authority for the occasion. These deputies opened the sessions by reading the imperial edict (in Latin and Greek) and other documents. They presided in conjunction with the patriarchs, conducted the entire course of the transactions, preserved order and security, closed the council, and signed the acts either at the head or at the foot of the signatures of the bishops. In this prominent position they sometimes exercised, when they had a theological interest or opinion of their own, no small influence on the discussions and decisions, though they had no votum; as the presiding officers of deliberative and legislative bodies generally have no vote, except when the decision of a question depends upon their voice.

To this presidency of the emperor or of his commissioners the acts of the councils and the Greek historians often refer. Even Pope Stephen V. (a.d. 817) writes, that Constantine the Great presided in the council of Nice. According to Eusebius, he introduced the principal matters of business with a solemn discourse, constantly attended the sessions, and took the place of honor in the assembly. His presence among the bishops at the banquet, which he gave them at the close of the council, seemed to that panegyrical historian a type of Christ among his saints!

Euseb., Vita Const. iii. 15: Χριστοῦ βασιλείας ἔδοξενἄντις φαντασιοῦσθαιεἰκόνα, ὄναρτ̓εἷναι ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὕπαρ τὸ γινόμενον.

But together with the imperial commissioners, or in their absence, the different patriarchs or their representatives, especially the legates of the Roman bishop, the most powerful of the patriarchs, took part in the presiding office. This was the case at the third and fourth, and the sixth, seventh, and eighth universal councils.

For the emperor’s connection with the council had reference rather to the conduct of business and to the external affairs of the synod, than to its theological and religious discussions. This distinction appears in the well-known dictum of Constantine respecting a double episcopate, which we have already noticed. And at the Nicene council the emperor acted accordingly. He paid the bishops greater reverence than his heathen predecessors had shown the Roman senators. He wished to be a servant, not a judge, of the successors of the apostles, who are constituted priests and gods on earth. After his opening address, he “resigned the word” to the (clerical) officers of the council,

Eusebius, Vita Const. iii. 13: Ὁμὲνδὴταῦτεἰπὼν ̔ Ρωμαίᾳ γλώττῃ[which was still the official language], ὑφερμηνεύοντος ἑτέρου, παρεδίδουτὸνλόγοντοῖς τῆς συνόδουπροέδροις. Yet, according to the immediately following words of Eusebius, the emperor continued to take lively interest in the proceedings, hearing, speaking, and exhorting to harmony. Eusebius’whole account of this synod is brief and unsatisfactory.

Finally, from the emperors proceeded the ratification of the councils. Partly by their signatures, partly by special edicts, they gave the decrees of the council legal validity; they raised them to laws of the realm; they took pains to have them observed, and punished the disobedient with deposition and banishment. This was done by Constantine the Great for the decrees of Nice; by Theodosius the Great for those of Constantinople; by Marcian for those of Chalcedon. The second ecumenical council expressly prayed the emperor for such sanction, since he was present neither in person nor by commission. The papal confirmation, on the contrary, was not considered necessary, until after the fourth general council, in 451.

To wit, in a letter of the council to Leo (Ep. 89, in the Epistles of Leo, ed. Baller., tom. i. p. 1099), and in a letter of Marcian to Leo (Ep. 110, tom. i. p. 1182 sq.).

Apart from this predominance of the emperor and his commissioners, the character of the ecumenical councils was thoroughly hierarchical. In the apostolic council at Jerusalem, the elders and the brethren took part with the apostles, and the decision went forth in the name of the whole congregation.

Acts xv. 22: Τότεἔδοξετοῖς ἀποστόλοις καὶτοῖς πρεσβυτέροις σὺνὃλῃ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ; and v. 23: Οἱἀπόστολοικαὶοἰπρεσβύτεροικαὶοἰἀδελφοὶτοῖς ... ἀδελφοῖς. κ.τ.λ. Comp. my Hist. of the Apostolic Church, § 69, and § 128.

Yet it must be remembered, that the bishops of that day were elected by the popular voice. So far as that went, they really represented the Christian people, and were not seldom called to account by the people for their acts, though they voted in their own name as successors of the apostles. Eusebius felt bound to justify, his vote at Nice before his diocese in Caesarea, and the Egyptian bishops at Chalcedon feared an uproar in their congregations.

Furthermore, the councils, in an age of absolute despotism, sanctioned the principle of common public deliberation, as the best means of arriving at truth and settling controversy. They revived the spectacle of the Roman senate in ecclesiastical form, and were the forerunners of representative government and parliamentary legislation.

In matters of discipline the majority decided; but in matters of faith unanimity was required, though, if necessary, it was forced by the excision of the dissentient minority. In the midst of the assembly an open copy of the Gospels lay upon a desk or table, as, a symbol of the presence of Christ, whose infallible word is the rule of all doctrine. Subsequently the ecclesiastical canons and the relics of the saints were laid in similar state. The bishops—at least according to later usage—sat in a circle, in the order of the dates of their ordination or the rank of their sees; behind them, the priests; before or beside them, the deacons. The meetings were opened and closed with religious solemnities in liturgical style. In the ancient councils the various subjects were discussed in open synod, and the Acts of the councils contain long discourses and debates. But in the council of Trent the subjects of action were wrought up in separate committees, and only laid before the whole synod for ratification. The vote was always taken by heads, till the council of Constance, when it was taken by nations, to avoid the preponderance of the Italian prelates.

The jurisdiction of the ecumenical councils covered the entire legislation of the church, all matters of Christian faith and practice (fidei et morum), and all matters of organization arid worship. The doctrinal decrees were called dogmata or symbola; the disciplinary, canones. At the same time, the councils exercised, when occasion required, the highest judicial authority, in excommunicating bishops and patriarchs.

The authority of these councils in the decision of all points of controversy was supreme and final.

Their doctrinal decisions were early invested with infallibility; the promises of the Lord respecting the indestructibleness of his church, his own perpetual presence with the ministry, and the guidance of the Spirit of truth, being applied in the full sense to those councils, as representing the whole church. After the example of the apostolic council, the usual formula for a decree was: Visum est Sprirtui Sancto et nobis.

Ἒδοξετῷπνεύματιἁγίῳ καὶἡμῖν, Acts xv. 28. The provincial councils, too, had already used this phrase; e.g. the Concil. Carthaginiense, of 252 (in the Opera Cypriani): “Placuit nobis, Sancto Spiritu suggerente, et Domino per visiones multas et manifestas admonente.” So the council of Arles, in 314: “Placuit ergo, presente Spiritu Sancto et angelis ejus.”

Not so with the rules of discipline prescribed in the canones. These were never considered universally binding, like the symbols of faith; since matters of organization and usage, pertaining rather to the external form of the church, are more or less subject to the vicissitude of time. The fifteenth canon of the council of Nice, which prohibited and declared invalid the transfer of the clergy from one place to another,

Conc. Nic. can. 15: ὛΩστεἀπὸπόλεως εἰς πόλινμὴμεταβαίνεινμήτεἐπίσκοπονμήτεπρεσβύτερονμήτεδιάκονον. This prohibition arose from the theory of the relation between a clergyman and his congregation, as a mystical marriage, and was designed to restrain clerical ambition. It appears in the Can. Apost. 13, 14, but was often violated. At the Nicene council itself there were several bishops, like Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Eustathius of Antioch, who had exchanged their first bishopric for another and a better.

Augustine, the ablest and the most devout of the fathers, conceived, in the best vein of his age, a philosophical view of this authority of the councils, which strikes a wise and wholesome mean between the extremes of veneration and disparagement, and approaches the free spirit of evangelical Protestantism. He justly subordinates these councils to the Holy Scriptures, which are the highest and the perfect rule of faith, and supposes that the decrees of a council may be, not indeed set aside and repealed, yet enlarged and completed by, the deeper research of a later day. They embody, for the general need, the results already duly prepared by preceding theological controversies, and give the consciousness of the church, on the subject in question, the clearest and most precise expression possible at the time. But this consciousness itself is subject to development. While the Holy Scriptures present the truth unequivocally and infallibly, and allow no room for doubt, the judgment of bishops may be corrected and enriched with new truths from the word of God, by the wiser judgment of other bishops; the judgment of the provincial council by that of a general; and the views of one general council by those of a later.

De Baptismo contra Donatistas, I. ii. 3 (in the Benedictine edition of August. Opera, tom. ix. p. 98): “Quis autem nesciat, sanctam Scripturam canonicam, tam Veteris quam Novi Testamenti, certis suis terminis contineri, eamque omnibus posterioribus Episcoporum literis ita praeponi, ut de illa omnino dubitari et disceptari non possit, utrum verum vel utrum rectum sit, quidquid in ea scriptum esse constiterit; Episcoporum autem literas quae post confirmatum canonem vel scripta sunt vel scribuntur, et per sermonem forte sapientiorem cujuslibet in ea re peritioris, et per aliorum Episcoporum graviorem auctoritatem doctioremque prudentiam, et per concilia licere reprehendi, si quid in eis forte a veritate deviatum est; et ipsa concilia, quae per singulas regiones vel provincias fiunt, plenariorum conciliorum auctoritate, quae fiunt ex universo orbe Christiano, sine ullis ambagibus cedere; ipsaque plenaria saepe priora posterioribus emendari, quum aliquo experimento rerum aperitur quod clausum erat et cognoscitur quod latebat; sine ullo typho sacrilegae superbiae, sine ulla inflata cervice arrogantiae, sine ulla contentione lividae invidiae, cum sancta humilitate, cum pace catholica, cum caritate christiana.” Comp. the passage Contra Maximinum Arianum, ii. cap. 14, § 3 (in the Bened. ed., tom. viii. p. 704), where he will have even the decision of the Nicene council concerning the homousion measured by the higher standard of the Scriptures.

The Protestant church makes the authority of the general councils, and of all ecclesiastical tradition, depend on the degree of its conformity to the Holy Scriptures; while the Greek and Roman churches make Scripture and tradition coordinate. The Protestant church justly holds the first four general councils in high, though not servile, veneration, and has received their statements of doctrine into her confessions of faith, because she perceives in them, though compassed with human imperfection, the clearest and most suitable expression of the teaching of the Scriptures respecting the Trinity and the divine-human person of Christ. Beyond these statements the judgment of the church (which must be carefully distinguished from theological speculation) has not to this day materially advanced;—the highest tribute to the wisdom and importance of those councils. But this is not saying that the Nicene and the later Athanasian creeds are the non plus ultra of all the church’s knowledge of the articles therein defined. Rather is it the duty of theology and of the church, while prizing and holding fast those earlier attainments, to study the same problems ever anew, to penetrate further and further these sacred fundamental mysteries of Christianity, and to bring to light new treasures from the inexhaustible mines of the Word of God, under the guidance of the same Holy Spirit, who lives and works in the church at this day as mightily as he did in the fifth century and the fourth. Christology, for example, by the development of the doctrine of the two states of Christ in the Lutheran church, and of the three offices of Christ in the Reformed, has been substantially enriched; the old Catholic doctrine, which was fixed with unerring tact at the council of Chalcedon, being directly concerned only with the two natures of Christ, as against the dualism of Nestorius and the monophysitism of Eutyches.

With this provision for further and deeper soundings of Scripture truth, Protestantism feels itself one with the ancient Greek and Latin church in the bond of ecumenical orthodoxy. But toward the disciplinary canons of the ecumenical councils its position is still more free and independent than that of the Roman church. Those canons are based upon an essentially unprotestant, that is, hierarchical and sacrificial conception of church order and worship, which the Lutheran and Anglican reformation in part, and the Zwinglian and Calvinistic almost entirely renounced. Yet this is not to say that much may not still be learned, in the sphere of discipline, from those councils, and that perhaps many an ancient custom or institution is not worthy to be revived in the spirit of evangelical freedom.

The moral character of those councils was substantially parallel with that of earlier and later ecclesiastical assemblies, and cannot therefore be made a criterion of their historical importance and their dogmatic authority. They faithfully reflect both the light and the shade of the ancient church. They bear the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. If even among the inspired apostles at the council of Jerusalem there was much debate,

Acts xv. 6: Πολλῆς συζητήσεως γενομένης; which Luther indeed renders quite too strongly: ” After they had wrangled long.” The English versions from Tyndale to King James translate: ” much disputing.”

We have on this point the testimony of contemporaries and of the acts of the councils themselves. St. Gregory Nazianzen, who, in the judgment of Socrates, was the most devout and eloquent man of his age,

Hist. Eccl. lib. v. cap. 7.

In all these outbreaks of human passion, however, we must not forget that the Lord was sitting in the ship of the church, directing her safely through the billows and storms. The Spirit of truth, who was not to depart from her, always triumphed over error at last, and even glorified himself through the weaknesses of his instruments. Upon this unmistakable guidance from above, only set out by the contrast of human imperfections, our reverence for the councils must be based. Soli Deo gloria; or, in the language of Chrysostom: Δόξα τῷ θεῷ πάντων ἕνεκεν!

§ 66. List of the Ecumenical Councils of the Ancient Church,

We only add, by way of a general view, a list of all the ecumenical councils of the Graeco-Roman church, with a brief account of their character and work.

1. The Concilium Nicaenum I., a.d. 325; held at Nicaea in Bithynia, a lively commercial town near the imperial residence of Nicomedia, and easily accessible by land and sea. It consisted of three hundred and eighteen bishops,

This is the usual estimate, resting on the authority of Athanasius, Basil (Ep. 114; Opera, t. iii. p 207, ed. Bened.), Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret; whence the council is sometimes called the Assembly of the Three Hundred and Eighteen. Other data reduce the number to three hundred, or to two hundred and seventy, or two hundred and fifty, or two hundred and eighteen; while later tradition swells it to two thousand or more.

2. The Concilium Constantinopolitanum I., a.d. 381 summoned by Theodosius the Great, and held at the imperial city, which had not even name in history till five years after the former council. This council, however, was exclusively oriental, and comprised only a hundred and fifty bishops, as the emperor had summoned none but the adherents of the Nicene party, which had become very much reduced under the previous reign. The emperor did not attend it. Meletius of Antioch was president till his death; then Gregory Nazianzen; and, after his resignation, the newly elected patriarch Nectarius of Constantinople. The council enlarged the Nicene confession by an article on the divinity and personality of the Holy Ghost, in opposition to the Macedonians or Pneumatomachists (hence the title Symbolum Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum), and issued seven more canons, of which the Latin versions, however, give only the first four, leaving the genuineness of the other three, as many think, in doubt.

3. The Concilium Ephesinum, a.d. 431; called by Theodosius II., in connection with the Western co-emperor Valentinian III., and held under the direction of the ambitious and violent Cyril of Alexandria. This council consisted of, at first, a hundred and sixty bishops, afterward a hundred and ninety-eight,

The opposition council, which John of Antioch, on his subsequent arrival, held in the same city in the cause of Nestorius and under the protection of the imperial commissioner Candidian, numbered forty-three members, and excommunicated Cyril, as Cyril had excommunicated Nestorius.

4. The Concilium Chalcedonense, a.d. 451; summoned by the emperor Marcian, at the instance of the Roman bishop Leo; held at Chalcedon in Bithynia, opposite Constantinople; and composed of five hundred and twenty (some say six hundred and thirty) bishops.

The synod itself, in a letter to Leo, states the number as only five hundred and twenty; Leo, on the contrary (Ep. 102), speaks of about six hundred members; and the usual opinion (Tillemont, Memoires, t. xv. p. 641) raises the whole number of members, including deputies, to six hundred and thirty.

5. The Concilium Constantinopolitanum II. was assembled a full century later, by the emperor Tustinian, a.d. 553, without consent of the pope, for the adjustment of the tedious Monophysite controversy. It was presided over by the patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople, consisted of only one hundred and sixty-four bishops, and issued fourteen anathemas against the three chapters,

Tria capitula, Κεφάλεια.

Besides these, there are two later councils, which have attained among the Greeks and Latins an undisputed ecumenical authority: the Third Council of Constantinople, under Constantine Progonatus, a.d. 680, which condemned Monothelitism (and Pope Honorius, † 638),

The condemnation of a departed pope as a heretic by an ecumenical council is so inconsistent with the claims of papal infallibility, that Romish historians have tried their utmost to dispute the fact, or to weaken its force by sophistical pleading.

Thus Nicaea—now the miserable Turkish hamlet Is-nik

Εἰς Νίκαιαν. Nice and Nicene are properly misnomers, but sanctioned by the use of Gibbon and other great English writers.

From this time forth the Greeks and Latins part, and ecumenical councils are no longer to be named. The Greeks considered the second Trullan

Trullum was a saloon with a cupola in the imperial palace of Constantinople.

§ 74. The Revolution in Cultus.

The change in the legal and social position of Christianity with reference to the temporal power, produced a mighty effect upon its cultus. Hitherto the Christian worship had been confined to a comparatively small number of upright confessors, most of whom belonged to the poorer classes of society. Now it came forth from its secrecy in private houses, deserts, and catacombs, to the light of day, and must adapt itself to the higher classes and to the great mass of the people, who had been bred in the traditions of heathenism. The development of the hierarchy and the enrichment of public worship go hand in hand. A republican and democratic constitution demands simple manners and customs; aristocracy and monarchy surround themselves with a formal etiquette and a brilliant court-life. The universal priesthood is closely connected with a simple cultus; the episcopal hierarchy, with a rich, imposing ceremonial.

In the Nicene age the church laid aside her lowly servant-form, and put on a splendid imperial garb. She exchanged the primitive simplicity of her cultus for a richly colored multiplicity. She drew all the fine arts into the service of the sanctuary, and began her sublime creations of Christian architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and music. In place of the pagan temple and altar arose everywhere the stately church and the chapel in honor of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, of martyrs and saints. The kindred ideas of priesthood, sacrifice, and altar became more fully developed and more firmly fixed, as the outward hierarchy grew. The mass, or daily repetition of the atoning sacrifice of Christ by the hand of the priest, became the mysterious centre of the whole system of worship. The number of church festivals was increased; processions, and pilgrimages, and a multitude of significant and superstitious customs and ceremonies were introduced. The public worship of God assumed, if we may so speak, a dramatic, theatrical character, which made it attractive and imposing to the mass of the people, who were as yet incapable, for the most part, of worshipping God in spirit and in truth. It was addressed rather to the eye and the ear, to feeling and imagination, than to intelligence and will. In short, we already find in the Nicene age almost all the essential features of the sacerdotal, mysterious, ceremonial, symbolical cultus of the Greek and Roman churches of the present day.

This enrichment and embellishment of the cultus was, on one hand, a real advance, and unquestionably had a disciplinary and educational power, like the hierarchical organization, for the training of the popular masses. But the gain in outward appearance and splendor was balanced by many a loss in simplicity and spirituality. While the senses and the imagination were entertained and charmed, the heart not rarely returned cold and hungry. Not a few pagan habits and ceremonies, concealed under new names, crept into the church, or were baptized only with water, not with the fire and Spirit of the gospel. It is well known with what peculiar tenacity a people cleave to religious usages; and it could not be expected that they should break off in an instant from the traditions of centuries. Nor, in fact, are things which may have descended from heathenism, to be by any means sweepingly condemned. Both the Jewish cultus and the heathen are based upon those universal religious wants which Christianity must satisfy, and which Christianity alone can truly meet. Finally, the church has adopted hardly a single existing form or ceremony of religion, without at the same time breathing into it a new spirit, and investing it with a high moral import. But the limit of such appropriation it is very hard to fix, and the old nature of Judaism and heathenism which has its point of attachment in the natural heart of man, continually betrayed its tenacious presence. This is conceded and lamented by the most earnest of the church fathers of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, the very persons who are in other respects most deeply involved in the Catholic ideas of cultus.

In the Christian martyr-worship and saint-worship, which now spread with giant strides over the whole Christian world, we cannot possibly mistake the succession of the pagan worship of gods and heroes, with its noisy popular festivities. Augustine puts into the mouth of a heathen the question: “Wherefore must we forsake gods, which the Christians themselves worship with us?” He deplores the frequent revels and amusements at the tombs of the martyrs; though he thinks that allowance should be made for these weaknesses out of regard to the ancient custom. Leo the Great speaks of Christians in Rome who first worshipped the rising sun, doing homage to the pagan Apollo, before repairing to the basilica of St. Peter. Theodoret defends the Christian practices at the graves of the martyrs by pointing to the pagan libations, propitiations, gods, and demigods. Since Hercules, Aesculapitis, Bacchus, the Dioscuri, and many other objects of pagan worship were mere deified men, the Christians, he thinks, cannot be blamed for honoring their martyrs—not making them gods but venerating them as witnesses and servants of the only, true God. Chrysostom mourns over the theatrical customs, such as loud clapping in applause, which the Christians at Antioch and Constantinople brought with them into the church. In the Christmas festival, which from the fourth century spread from Rome over the entire church, the holy commemoration of the birth of the Redeemer is associated—to this day, even in Protestant lands—with the wanton merriments of the pagan Saturnalia. And even in the celebration of Sunday, as it was introduced by Constantine, and still continues on the whole continent of Europe, the cultus of the old sun-god Apollo mingles, with the remembrance of the resurrection of Christ; and the widespread profanation of the Lord’s Day, especially on the continent of Europe, demonstrates the great influence which heathenism still exerts upon Roman and Greek Catholic, and even upon Protestant, Christendom.

§ 75. The Civil and Religious Sunday.

Geo. Holden: The Christian Sabbath. Lond. 1825 (see ch. v.). John T. Baylee: History of the Sabbath. Lond. 1857 (see chs. x.-xiii.). James Aug. Hessey: Sunday, its Origin, History, and present Obligation; Bampton Lectures preached before the University of Oxford. Lond. 1860 (Patristic and high-Anglican). James Gilfillan: The Sabbath viewed in the Light of Reason, Revelation, and History, with Sketches of its Literature. Edinb. and New York, 1862 (The Puritan and Anglo-American view). Robert Cox: The Literature on the Sabbath Question. Edinb. 1865, 2 vols. (Latitudinarian, but very full and learned).

The observance of Sunday originated in the time of the apostles, and ever since forms the basis of public worship, with its ennobling, sanctifying, and cheering influences, in all Christian lands.

The Christian Sabbath is, on the one hand, the continuation and the regeneration of the Jewish Sabbath, based upon God’s resting from the creation and upon the fourth commandment of the decalogue, which, as to its substance, is not of merely national application, like the ceremonial and civil law, but of universal import and perpetual validity for mankind. It is, on the other hand, a new creation of the gospel, a memorial of the resurrection of Christ and of the work of redemption completed and divinely sealed thereby. It rests, we may say, upon the threefold basis of the original creation, the Jewish legislation, and the Christian redemption, and is rooted in the physical, the moral, and the religious wants of our nature. It has a legal and an evangelical aspect. Like the law in general, the institution of the Christian Sabbath is a wholesome restraint upon the people, and a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ. But it is also strictly evangelical: it was originally made for the benefit of man, like the family, with which it goes back beyond the fall to the paradise of innocence, as the second institution of God on earth; it was “a delight” to the pious of the old dispensation (Isa. lviii. 13), and now, under the new, it is fraught with the glorious memories and blessings of Christ’s resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Christian Sabbath is the ancient Sabbath baptized with fire and the Holy Ghost, regenerated, spiritualized, and glorified. It is the connecting link of creation and redemption, of paradise lost, and paradise regained, and a pledge and preparation for the saints’ everlasting rest in heaven.

For a fuller exposition of the Author’s views on the Christian Sabbath, see his Essay on the Anglo-American Sabbath (English and German), New York, 1863.

The ancient church viewed the Sunday mainly, we may say, one-sidedly and exclusively, from its Christian aspect as a new institution, and not in any way as a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath. It observed it as the day of the commemoration of the resurrection or of the now spiritual creation, and hence as a day of sacred joy and thanksgiving, standing in bold contrast to the days of humiliation and fasting, as the Easter festival contrasts with Good Friday.

So long as Christianity was not recognized and protected by the state, the observance of Sunday was purely religious, a strictly voluntary service, but exposed to continual interruption from the bustle of the world and a hostile community. The pagan Romans paid no more regard to the Christian Sunday than to the Jewish Sabbath.

In this matter, as in others, the accession of Constantine marks the beginning of a new era, and did good service to the church and to the cause of public order and morality. Constantine is the founder, in part at least, of the civil observance of Sunday, by which alone the religious observance of it in the church could be made universal and could be properly secured. In the year 321 he issued a law prohibiting manual labor in the cities and all judicial transactions, at a later period also military exercises, on Sunday.

Lex Constantini a. 321 (Cod. Just. l. iii., Tit. 12, 3): Imperator Constantinus Aug. Helpidio: “Omnes judices, urbanaeque plebes et cunctarum artium officia venerabili die Solis quiescant. Ruri tamen positi agrorum culturae libere licenterque inserviant, quoniam frequenter evenit, ut non aptius alio die frumenta sulcis aut vineae scrobibus mandentur, ne occasione momenti pereat commoditas coelesti provisione concessa. Dat. Non. Mart. Crispo ii. et Constantino ii. Coss.” In English: “On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain-sowing or for vine-planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost. (Given the 7th day of March, Crispus and Constantinebeing consuls each of them for the second time.)” The prohibition of military exercises is mentioned by Eusebius, Vita Const. IV. 19, 20, and seems to refer to a somewhat later period. In this point Constantinewas in advance of modern Christian princes, who prefer Sunday for parades.

For the army, however, he went beyond the limits of negative and protective legislation, to which the state ought to confine itself in matters of religion, and enjoined a certain positive observance of Sunday, in requiring the Christian soldiers to attend Christian worship, and the heathen soldiers, in the open field, at a given signal, with eyes and hands raised towards heaven, to recite the following, certainly very indefinite, form of prayer: “Thee alone we acknowledge as God, thee we reverence as king, to thee we call as our helper. To thee we owe our victories, by thee have we obtained the mastery of our enemies. To thee we give thanks for benefits already received, from thee we hope for benefits to come. We all fall at thy feet, and fervently beg that thou wouldest preserve to us our emperor Constantine and his divinely beloved sons in long life healthful and victorious.”

Euseb. Vit. Const. iv. 20.

Constantine’s successors pursued the Sunday legislation which he had initiated, and gave a legal sanction and civil significance also to other holy days of the church, which have no Scriptural authority, so that the special reverence due to the Lord’s Day was obscured in proportion as the number of rival claims increased. Thus Theodosius I. increased the number of judicial holidays to one hundred and twenty-four. The Valentinians, I. and II., prohibited the exaction of taxes and the collection of moneys on Sunday, and enforced the previously enacted prohibition of lawsuits. Theodosius the Great, in 386, and still more stringently the younger Theodosius, in 425, forbade theatrical performances, and Leo and Anthemius, in 460, prohibited other secular amusements, on the Lord’s Day.

Cod. Theod. xv. 5, 2, a. 386: “Nullus Solis die populo spectaculum praebeat.” If the emperor’s birthday fell on Sunday, the acknowledgment of it, which was accompanied by games, was to be postponed.

Ecclesiastical legislation in like manner prohibited needless mechanical and agricultural labor, and the attending of theatres and other public places of amusement, also hunting and weddings, on Sunday and on feast days. Besides such negative legislation, to which the state must confine itself, the church at the same time enjoined positive observances for the sacred day, especially the regular attendance of public worship, frequent communion, and the payment of free-will offerings (tithes). Many a council here confounded the legal and the evangelical principles, thinking themselves able to enforce by the threatening of penalties what has moral value only as a voluntary act. The Council of Eliberis, in 305, decreed the suspension from communion of any person living in a town who shall absent himself for three Lord’s Days from church. In the same legalistic spirit, the council of Sardica,

Can. xi. appealing to former ordinances, Comp. Can. Apost. xiii. and xiv. (xiv. and xv.), and the council of Elvira, can. xxi. Hefele: Conciliengesch. i. p. 570.

As to the private opinions of the principal fathers on this subject, they all favor the sanctification of the Lord’s Day, but treat it as a peculiarly Christian institution, and draw a strong, indeed a too strong, line of distinction between it and the Jewish Sabbath; forgetting that they are one in essence and aim, though different in form and spirit, and that the fourth commandment as to its substance—viz., the keeping holy of one day out of seven—is an integral part of the decalogue or the moral law, and hence of perpetual obligation.

See the principal patristic passages on the Lord’s Day in Hessey, Sunday, etc., p. 90 ff. and p. 388 ff. Hessey says, p. 114: “In no clearly genuine passage that I can discover in any writer of these two [the fourth and fifth] centuries, or in any public document, ecclesiastical or civil, is the fourth commandment referred to as the ground of the obligation to observe the Lord’s Day.” The Reformers of the sixteenth century, likewise, in their zeal against legalism and for Christian freedom, entertained rather lax views on the Sabbath law. It was left for Puritanism in England, at the close of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, to bring out the perpetuity of the fourth commandment and the legal and general moral feature in the Christian Sabbath. The book of Dr. Bownd, first published in 1595, under the title, “The Doctrine of the Sabbath,” produced an entire revolution on the subject in the English mind, which is visible to this day in the strict observance of the Lord’s Day in England, Scotland, the British Provinces, and the United States. Comp. on Dr. Bownd’s book my Essay above quoted, p. 16 ff., Gilfillan, p. 69 ff., and Hessey, p. 276 ff.

Besides Sunday, the Jewish Sabbath also was distinguished in the Eastern church by the absence of fasting and by standing in prayer. The Western church, on the contrary, especially the Roman, in protest against Judaism, observed the seventh day of the week as a fast day, like Friday. This difference between the two churches was permanently fixed by the fifty-fifth canon of the Trullan council of 692: “In Rome fasting is practised on all the Saturdays of Quadragesima [the forty days’ fast before Easter]. This is contrary to the sixty-sixth apostolic canon, and must no longer be done. Whoever does it, if a clergyman, shall be deposed; if a layman, excommunicated.”

Wednesday and Friday also continued to be observed in many countries as days commemorative of the passion of Christ (dies stationum), with half-fasting. The Latin church, however, gradually substituted fasting on Saturday for fasting on Wednesday.

Finally, as to the daily devotions: the number of the canonical hours was enlarged from three to seven (according to Ps. cxix. 164: “Seven times in a day will I praise thee But they were strictly kept only in the cloisters, under the technical names of matina (about three o’clock), prima (about six), tertia (nine), sexta (noon), nona (three in the afternoon), vesper (six), completorium (nine), and mesonyctium or vigilia (midnight). Usually two nocturnal prayers were united. The devotions consisted of prayer, singing, Scripture reading, especially in the Psalms, and readings from the histories of the martyrs and the homilies of the fathers. In the churches ordinarily only morning and evening worship was held. The high festivals were introduced by a night service, the vigils.

§ 79. The Time of the Easter Festival.

Comp. the Literature in vol. i. at § 99; also L. Ideler: Handbuch der Chronologie. Berlin, 1826. Vol. ii. F. Piper: Geschichte des Osterfestes. Berlin, 1845. Hefele: Conciliengeschichte. Freiburg, 1855. Vol. i. p. 286 ff.

The time of the Easter festival became, after the second century, the subject of long and violent controversies and practical confusions, which remind us of the later Eucharistic disputes, and give evidence that human passion and folly have sought to pervert the great facts and institutions of the New Testament from holy bonds of unity into torches of discord, and to turn the sweetest honey into poison, but, with all their efforts, have not been able to destroy the beneficent power of those gifts of God.

These Paschal controversies descended into the present period, and ended with the victory of the Roman and Alexandrian practice of keeping Easter, not, like Christmas and the Jewish Passover, on a fixed day of the month, whatever day of the week it might be, but on a Sunday, as the day of the resurrection of our Lord. Easter thus became, with all the feasts depending on it, a movable feast; and then the different reckonings of the calendar led to many inconveniences and confusions. The exact determination of Easter Sunday is made from the first full moon after the vernal equinox; so that the day may fall on any Sunday between the 22d day of March and the 25th of April.

The council of Arles in 314 had already decreed, in its first canon, that the Christian Passover be celebrated “uno die et uno tempore per omnem orbem,” and that the bishops of Rome should fix the time. But as this order was not universally obeyed, the fathers of Nicaea proposed to settle the matter, and this was the second main object of the first ecumenical council in 325. The result of the transactions on this point, the particulars of which are not known to us, does not appear in the canons (probably out of consideration for the numerous Quartodecimanians), but is doubtless preserved in the two circular letters of the council itself and the emperor Constantine.

Socrates: Hist. Eccl. i. 9; Theodoret: H. E. i. 10; Eusebius: Vita Const ii. 17. Comp. Hefele, l.c. i. p. 309 sqq.

At Nicaea, therefore, the Roman and Alexandrian usage with respect to Easter triumphed, and the Judaizing practice of the Quartodecimanians, who always celebrated Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan, became thenceforth a heresy. Yet that practice continued in many parts of the East, and in the time of Epiphanius, about a.d. 400, there were many, Quartodecimanians, who, as he says, were orthodox, indeed, in doctrine, but in ritual were addicted to Jewish fables, and built upon the principle: “Cursed is every one who does not keep his passover on the fourteenth of Nisan.”

Epiphanius, Haer. l.c. 1. Comp. Ex. xii. 15.

And even in the orthodox church these measures did not secure entire uniformity. For the council of Nicaea, probably from prudence, passed by the question of the Roman and Alexandrian computation of Easter. At least the Acts contain no reference to it.

Hefele thinks, however (i. p. 313 f.), from an expression of Cyril of Alexandria and Leo I., that the Nicaenum (1) gave the Alexandrian reckoning the preference over the Roman; (2) committed to Alexandria the reckoning, to Rome the announcing, of the Easter term; but that this order was not duly observed.

§ 83. The Festivals of Mary.

This mythical and fantastic, and, we must add, almost pagan and idolatrous Mariology impressed itself on the public cultus in a series of festivals, celebrating the most important facts and fictions of the life of the Virgin, and in some degree running parallel with the festivals of the birth, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.

1. The Annunciation of Mary

Ημέρα ἀσπασμοῦ, or Χαριτισμοῦ, εύαγγελισμοῦ, ἐνσαρκώσεως; festum annunciationis, s. incarnationis, conceptionis Domini.

2. The Purification of Mary

Festum purificationis Mariae, orpraesentationis Domini, Simeonis et Hannae occursus; ὑπαπάντη, or ὑπάντη, or ὑπάντησις τοῦ Κυρίου (the meeting of the Lord with Simeon and Anna in the temple).

3. The Ascension, or Assumption rather, of Mary

κοίμησις, or ἀνάληψις τῆς ἁγίας Θεοτόκου, festum assumptionis.

It rests, however, on a purely apocryphal foundation.

The entire silence of the apostles and the primitive church teachers respecting the departure of Mary stirred idle curiosity to all sorts of inventions, until a translation like Enoch’s and Elijah’s was attributed to her. In the time of Origen some were inferring from Luke ii. 35, that she had suffered martyrdom. Epiphanius will not decide whether she died and was buried, or not. Two apocryphal Greek writings de transitu Mariae, of the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, and afterward pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory of Tours († 595), for the first time contain the legend that the soul of the mother of God was transported to the heavenly paradise by Christ and His angels in presence of all the apostles, and on the following morning

According to later representations, as in the three discourses of John Damascenus on this subject, her body rested, like the body of the Lord, three days uncorrupted in the grave.

Still the resurrection and ascension of Mary are in the Roman church only a matter of “devout and probable opinion,” not an article of faith;

The Greek council of Jerusalem in 1672, which was summoned against the Calvinists, officially proclaimed it, and thus almost raised it to the authority of a dogma.

But since Mary, according to the most recent Roman dogma, was free even from original sin, and since death is a consequence of sin, it should strictly follow that she did not die at all, and rise again, but, like Enoch and Elijah, was carried alive to heaven.

In the Middle Age—to anticipate briefly—yet other festivals of Mary arose: the Nativity of Mary,

Nativitas, natalis B. M. V.; γενέθλιον, &c.

§ 84. The Worship of Martyrs and Saints.

I. Sources: The Memorial Discourses of Basil the Great on the martyr Mamas (a shepherd in Cappadocia, † about 276), and on the forty martyrs (soldiers, who are said to have suffered in Armenia under Licinius in 320); of Gregory Naz. on Cyprian († 248), on Athanasius († 372), and on Basil († 379); of Gregory Of Nyssa on Ephraim Syrus († 378), and on the megalomartyr Theodorus; of Chrysostom on Bernice and Prosdoce, on the Holy Martyrs, on the Egyptian Martyrs, on Meletius of Antioch; several homilies of Ambrose, Augustine, Leo the Great, Peter Chrysologus Caesarius, &c.; Jerome against Vigilantius. The most important passages of the fathers on the veneration of saints are conveniently collected in: The Faith of Catholics on certain points of controversy, confirmed by Scripture and attested by the Fathers. By Berington and Kirk, revised by Waterworth.” 3d ed. 1846, vol. iii. pp. 322–416.

II. The later Literature: (1) On the Roman Catholic side: The Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, thus far 58 vols. fol. (1643–1858, coming down to the 22d of October). Theod. Ruinart: Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta. Par. 1689 (confined to the first four centuries). Laderchio: S. patriarcharum et prophetarum, confessorum, cultus perpetuus, etc. Rom. 1730. (2) On the Protestant side: J. Dallaeus: Adversus Latinorum de cultus religiosi objecto traditionem. Genev. 1664. Isaac Taylor: Ancient Christianity. 4th ed. Lond. 1844, vel. ii. p. 173 ff. (“Christianized demonolatry in the fourth century.”)

The system of saint-worship, including both Hagiology and Hagiolatry, developed itself at the same time with the worship of Mary; for the latter is only the culmination of the former.

The New Testament is equally ignorant of both. The expression ἅγιοι, sancti, saints, is used by the apostles not of a particular class, a spiritual aristocracy of the church, but of all baptized and converted Christians without distinction; because they are separated from the world, consecrated to the service of God, washed from the guilt of sin by the blood of Christ, and, notwithstanding all their remaining imperfections and sins, called to perfect holiness. The apostles address their epistles to “the saints” i.e., the Christian believers, “at Rome, Corinth, Ephesus,” &c.

Comp. Acts ix. 13, 32, 41; xxvi. 10; Rom. i. 7; xii. 13; xv. 25, 26; 1 Cor. i. 2; vi. 1; Eph. i. 1, 15, 18; iv. 12; Phil. i. 1; iv. 21, 22; Rev. xiii. 7, 10, &c.

After the entrance of the heathen masses into the church the title came to be restricted to bishops and councils and to departed heroes of the Christian faith, especially the martyrs of the first three centuries. When, on the cessation of persecution, the martyr’s crown, at least within the limits of the Roman empire, was no longer attainable, extraordinary ascetic piety, great service to the church, and subsequently also the power of miracles, were required as indispensable conditions of reception into the Catholic calendar of saints. The anchorets especially, who, though not persecuted from without, voluntarily crucified their flesh and overcame evil spirits, seemed to stand equal to the martyrs in holiness and in claims to veneration. A tribunal of canonization did not yet exist. The popular voice commonly decided the matter, and passed for the voice of God. Some saints were venerated only in the regions where they lived and died; others enjoyed a national homage; others, a universal.

The veneration of the saints increased with the decrease of martyrdom, and with the remoteness of the objects of reverence. “Distance lends enchantment to the view;” but “familiarity” is apt “to breed contempt.” The sins and faults of the heroes of faith were lost in the bright haze of the past, while their virtues shone the more, and furnished to a pious and superstitious fancy the richest material for legendary poesy.

Almost all the catholic saints belong to the higher degrees of the clergy or to the monastic life. And the monks were the chief promoters of the worship of saints. At the head of the heavenly chorus stands Mary, crowned as queen by the side of her divine Son; then come the apostles and evangelists, who died a violent death, the protomartyr Stephen, and the martyrs of the first three centuries; the patriarchs and prophets also of the Old Covenant down to John the Baptist; and finally eminent hermits and monks, missionaries, theologians, and bishops, and those, in general, who distinguished themselves above their contemporaries in virtue or in public service. The measure of ascetic self-denial was the measure of Christian virtue. Though many of the greatest saints of the Bible, from the patriarch Abraham to Peter, the prince of the apostles, lived in marriage, the Romish ethics, from the time of Ambrose and Jerome, can allow no genuine holiness within the bonds of matrimony, and receives only virgines and some few vidui and viduae into its spiritual nobility.

To reconcile this perverted view with the Bible, the Roman tradition arbitrarily assumes that Peter separated from his wife after his conversion; whereas Paul, so late as the year 57, expressly presupposes the opposite, and claims for himself the right to take with him a sister as a wife on his missionary tours (ἀδελφὴν γυναῖκα περιάγειν), like the other apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas. 1 Cor. ix. 5. Married saints, like St. Elisabeth of Hungary and St. Louis of France, are rare exceptions.

To the saints, about the same period, were added angels as objects of worship. To angels there was ascribed in the church from the beginning a peculiar concern with the fortunes of the militant church, and a certain oversight of all lands and nations. But Ambrose is the first who expressly exhorts to the invocation of our patron angels, and represents it as a duty.

De viduis c. 9: “Obsecrandi sunt Angeli pro nobis, qui nobis ad praesidium dati sunt.” Origen had previously commended the invocation of angels.

Out of the old Biblical notion of guardian angels arose also the idea of patron saints for particular countries, cities, churches, and classes, and against particular evils and dangers. Peter and Paul and Laurentius became the patrons of Rome; James, the patron of Spain; Andrew, of Greece; John, of theologians; Luke, of painters; subsequently Phocas, of seamen; Ivo, of jurists; Anthony, a protector against pestilence; Apollonia, against tooth-aches; &c.

These different orders of saints and angels form a heavenly hierarchy, reflected in the ecclesiastical hierarchy on earth. Dionysius the Areopagite, a fantastical Christian Platonist of the fifth-century, exhibited the whole relation of man to God on the basis of the hierarchy; dividing the hierarchy into two branches, heavenly and earthly, and each of these again into several degrees, of which every higher one was the mediator of salvation to the one below it.

These are the outlines of the saint-worship of our period. Now to the exposition and estimate of it, and then the proofs.

The worship of saints proceeded originally, without doubt, from a pure and truly Christian source, to wit: a very deep and lively sense of the communion of saints, which extends over death and the grave, and embraces even the blessed in heaven. It was closely connected with love to Christ, and with gratitude for everything great and good which he has done through his instruments for the welfare of posterity. The church fulfilled a simple and natural duty of gratitude, when, in the consciousness of unbroken fellowship with the church triumphant, she honored the memory of the martyrs and confessors, who had offered their life for their faith, and had achieved victory for it over all its enemies. She performed a duty of fidelity to her own children, when she held up for admiration and imitation the noble virtues and services of their fathers. She honored and glorified Christ Himself when she surrounded Him with an innumerable company of followers, contemplated the reflection of His glory in them, and sang to His praise in the Ambrosian Te Deum:

In the first three centuries the veneration of the martyrs in general restricted itself to the thankful remembrance of their virtues and the celebration of the day of their death as the day of their heavenly birth.

Natalitia, γενέθλια.

But in the Nicene age it advanced to a formal invocation of the saints as our patrons (patroni) and intercessors (intercessores, mediatores) before the throne of grace, and degenerated into a form of refined polytheism and idolatry. The saints came into the place of the demigods, Penates and Lares, the patrons of the domestic hearth and of the country. As once temples and altars to the heroes, so now churches and chapels

Memoriae, μαρτύρια.

This invocation of the dead was accompanied with the presumption that they take the deepest interest in all the fortunes of the kingdom of God on earth, and express it in prayers and intercessions.

Ambrose, De viduis, c. 9, calls the martyrs “nostri praesules et speculatores (spectatores) vitae actuumque nostrorum.”

But here rises the insolvable question: How can departed saints hear at once the prayers of so many Christians on earth, unless they either partake of divine omnipresence or divine omniscience? And is it not idolatrous to clothe creatures with attributes which belong exclusively to Godhead? Or, if the departed saints first learn from the omniscient God our prayers, and then bring them again before God with their powerful intercessions, to what purpose this circuitous way? Why not at once address God immediately, who alone is able, and who is always ready, to hear His children for the sake of Christ?

Augustine felt this difficulty, and concedes his inability to solve it. He leaves it undecided, whether the saints (as Jerome and others actually supposed) are present in so many places at once, or their knowledge comes through the omniscience of God, or finally it comes through the ministry of angels.

De cura pro mortuis (a.d. 421), c. 16. In another place he decidedly rejects the first hypothesis, because otherwise he himself would be always surrounded by his pious mother, and because in Isa. lxiii. 16 it is said: “Abraham is ignorant of us.”

But in spite of all these distinctions and cautions, which must be expected from a man like Augustine, and acknowledged to be a wholesome restraint against excesses, we cannot but see in the martyr-worship, as it was actually practised, a new form of the hero-worship of the pagans. Nor can we wonder in the least. For the great mass of the Christian people came, in fact, fresh from polytheism, without thorough conversion, and could not divest themselves of their old notions and customs at a stroke. The despotic form of government, the servile subjection of the people, the idolatrous homage which was paid to the Byzantine emperors and their statues, the predicates divina, sacra, coelestia, which were applied to the utterances of their will, favored the worship of saints. The heathen emperor Julian sarcastically reproached the Christians with reintroducing polytheism into monotheism, but, on account of the difference of the objects, revolted from the Christian worship of martyrs and relics, as from the “stench of graves and dead men’s bones.” The Manichaean taunt we have already mentioned. The Spanish presbyter Vigilantius, in the fifth century, called the worshippers of martyrs and relics, ashes-worshippers and idolaters,

Cinerarios and idololatrae.

Yet even this last distinction which Theodoret asserts, sometimes disappeared. Augustine laments that in the African church banqueting and revelling were daily practised in honor of the martyrs,

“Commessationes et ebrietates in honorem etiam beatissimorum Martyrum.” Ep. 22 and 29.

In connection with the new hero-worship a new mythology also arose, which filled up the gaps of the history of the saints, and sometimes even transformed the pagan myths of gods and heroes into Christian legends.

Thus, e.g., the fate of the Attic king’s son Hippolytus, who was dragged to death by horses on the sea shore, was transferred to the Christian martyr Hippolytus, of the beginning of the third century. The martyr Phocas, a gardener at Sinope in Pontus, became the patron of all mariners, and took the place of Castor and Pollux. At the daily meals on shipboard, Phocas had his portion set out among the rest, as an invisible guest, and the proceeds of the sale of these portions was finally distributed among the poor as a thank-offering for the prosperous voyage.

The worship of the saints found eloquent vindication and encouragement not only, in poets like Prudentius (about 405) and Paulinus of Nola (died 431), to whom greater freedom is allowed, but even in all the prominent theologians and preachers of the Nicene and post-Nicene age. It was as popular as monkery, and was as enthusiastically commended by the leaders of the church in the East and West.

The two institutions, moreover, are closely connected and favor each other. The monks were most zealous friends of saint-worship in their own cause. The church of the fifth century already went almost as far in it as the Middle Age, at all events quite as far as the council of Trent; for this council does not prescribe the invocation of the saints, but confines itself to approving it as “good and useful” (not as necessary) on the ground of their reigning with Christ in heaven and their intercession for us, and expressly remarks that Christ is our only, Redeemer and Saviour.

Conc. Trid. Sess. xxv.: “Sanctos una cum Christo regnantes orationes suas pro hominibus Deo offere;bonum atque utile esse suppliciter eos invocare et ob beneficia impetranda a Deo per Filium eius Jesum Christum, qui solus noster redemptor et salvator est, ad eorum orationes, opem auxiliumque confugere.”

We now cite, for proof and further illustration, the most important passages from the church fathers of our period on this point. In the numerous memorial discourses of the fathers, the martyrs are loaded with eulogies, addressed as present, and besought for their protection. The universal tone of those productions is offensive to the Protestant taste, and can hardly be reconciled with evangelical ideas of the exclusive and all-sufficient mediation of Christ and of justification by pure grace without the merit of works. But it must not be forgotten that in these discourses very much is to be put to the account of the degenerate, extravagant, and fulsome rhetoric of that time. The best church fathers, too, never separated the merits of the saints from the merits of Christ, but considered the former as flowing out of the latter.

We begin with the Greek fathers. Basil the Great calls the forty soldiers who are said to have suffered martyrdom under Licinius in Sebaste about 320, not only a “holy choir,” an “invincible phalanx,” but also “common patrons of the human family, helpers of our prayers and most mighty intercessors with God.”

Basil. M. Hom. 19, in XL. Martyres, § 8: Ὢ χορὸς ἅγιος, ὢ σύνταγμα ἱερόν, ὢ συναπισμὸς ἀῥῥαγής, ὢ κοινοὶ φύλακες τοῦ γένους τῶν ἀνθρώπων (Ocommunes generis humani custodes), ἀγαθοὶ κοινωνοὶ φροντίδων, δεήσεως συνεργοὶ, πρεσβευταὶδυνατώτατοι (legati apud Deum potentissimi), ἀστέρες τῆς οἰκουμένης, ἄνθη τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν, ὑμᾶς ούχ ἡ γῆ κατέκρυψεν, ἀλλ̓ οὐρανὸς ὑπεδέξατο.

Ephraim Syrus addresses the departed saints, in general, in such words as these: “Remember me, ye heirs of God, ye brethren of Christ, pray to the Saviour for me, that I through Christ may be delivered from him who assaults me from day to day;” and the mother of a martyr: “O holy, true, and blessed mother, plead for me with the saints, and pray: ’Ye triumphant martyrs of Christ, pray for Ephraim, the least, the miserable,’ that I may find grace, and through the grace of Christ may be saved.”

Gregory of Nyssa asks of St. Theodore, whom he thinks invisibly present at his memorial feast, intercessions for his country, for peace, for the preservation of orthodoxy, and begs him to arouse the apostles Peter and Paul and John to prayer for the church planted by them (as if they needed such an admonition!). He relates with satisfaction that the people streamed to the burial place of this saint in such multitudes that the place looked like an ant hill. In his Life of St. Ephraim, he tells of a pilgrim who lost himself among the barbarian posterity of Ishmael, but by the prayer, “St. Ephraim, help me!”

Αγιε Εφραὶμ, βαήθειμοί.

Gregory Nazianzen is convinced that the departed Cyprian guides and protects his church in Carthage more powerfully by his intercessions than he formerly did by his teachings, because he now stands so much nearer the Deity; he addresses him as present, and implores his favor and protection.

Σὺ δὲ ἡμᾶς ἐποπτεύσις ἄνωθεν ἵλεως, καὶ τὸν ἡμέτερον διεξάγοις λόγον καὶ βίον, κ. τ.λ. Orat. 18 in laud. Cypr. p. 286.

Even Chrysostom did not rise above the spirit of the time. He too is an eloquent and enthusiastic advocate of the worship of the saints and their relics. At the close of his memorial discourse on Sts. Bernice and Prosdoce—two saints who have not even a place in the Roman calendar—he exhorts his hearers not only on their memorial days but also on other days to implore these saints to be our protectors: “For they have great boldness not merely during their life but also after death, yea, much greater after death.

Παρακαλῶμεν αὐτὰς, ἀξιῶμεν γενέσθαι προστάτιδας ἡμῶν; πολλὴν γὰρ ἔχουσιν παῤῥησίαν οὐχὶ ζῶσαι μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τελευτήσασαι· καὶ πολλῶ μᾶλλον τελευτήσασαι. Opp. tom. ii. 770.

Asterius of Amasia calls the martyr Phocas, the patron of mariners, “a pillar and foundation of the churches of God in the world, the most renowned of the martyrs, who draws men of all countries in hosts to his church in Sinope, and who now, since his death, distributes more abundant nourishment than Joseph in Egypt.”

Among the Latin fathers, Ambrose of Milan is one of the first and most decided promoters of the worship of saints. We cite a passage or two. “May Peter, who so successfully weeps for himself, weep also for us, and turn upon us the friendly look of Christ.

Hexaem. l. v. cap. 25, § 90: “Fleat pro nobis Petrus, qui pro se bene flevit, et in nos pia Christi ora convertat. Approperet Jesu Domini passio, quae quotidie delicta nostra condonat et munus remissionis operatur.”

Jerome disputes the opinion of Vigilantius, that we should pray for one another in this life only, and that the dead do not hear our prayers, and ascribes to departed saints a sort of omnipresence, because, according to Rev. xiv. 4, they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.

Adv. Vigilant. n. 6: “Si agnus ubique, ergo et hi, qui cum agno sunt, ubique esse credendi sunt.” So the heathen also attributed ubiquity to their demons. Hesiodus, Opera et dies, v. 121 sqq.

Augustine infers from the interest which the rich man in hell still had in the fate of his five surviving brothers (Luke xvi. 27), that the pious dead in heaven must have even far more interest in the kindred and friends whom they have left behind.

Epist. 259, n. 5.

The Spanish poet Prudentius flees with prayers and confessions of sin to St. Laurentius, and considers himself unworthy to be heard by Christ Himself.

Hymn. ii. in hon. S. Laurent. vss. 570-584:

“Indignus agnosco et scio,

Quem Christus ipse exaudiat;

—- Sed per patronos martyres

Potest medelam consequi.”

The poems of Paulinus of Nola are full of direct prayers for the intercessions of the saints, especially of St. Felix, in whose honor he erected a basilica, and annually composed an ode, and whom he calls his patron, his father, his lord. He relates that the people came in great crowds around the wonder-working relics of this saint on his memorial day, and could not look on them enough.

Leo the Great, in his sermons, lays great stress on the powerful intercession of the apostles Peter and Paul, and of the Roman martyr Laurentius.

“Cuius oratione,” says he of the latter, “et patrocinio adjuvari nos sine cessatione confidimus.” Serm. 85 in Natal. S. Laurent c. 4.

Pope Gregory the Great, at the close of our period, went much farther.

According to this we cannot wonder that the Virgin Mary and the saints are interwoven also in the prayers of the liturgies,

E.g., the Liturgies of St. James, St. Mark, St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, the Coptic Liturgy of St. Cyril, and the Roman Liturgy.

§ 85. Festivals of the Saints.

The system of saint-worship, like that of the worship of Mary, became embodied in a series of religious festivals, of which many had only a local character, some a provincial, some a universal. To each saint a day of the year, the day of his death, or his heavenly birthday, was dedicated, and it was celebrated with a memorial oration and exercises of divine worship, but in many cases desecrated by unrestrained amusements of the people, like the feasts of the heathen gods and heroes.

The most important saints’ days which come down from the early church, and bear a universal character, are the following:

1. The feast of the two chief apostles Peter and Paul,

Natalis apostolorum Petri et Pauli.

2. Besides this, the Roman church has observed since the fifth century a special feast in honor of the prince of the apostles and for the glorification of the papal office: the feast of the See of Peter

Festum cathedrae Petri.

3. The feast of John, the apostle and evangelist, on the twenty-seventh of December, has already been mentioned in connection with the Christmas cycle.

Comp. § 77, volume 3

4. Likewise the feast of the protomartyr Stephen, on the twenty-sixth of December, after the fourth century.

· Ibid.

5. The feast of John the Baptist, the last representative of the saints before Christ. This was, contrary to the general rule, a feast of his birth, not his martyrdom, and, with reference to the birth festival of the Lord on the twenty-fifth of December, was celebrated six months earlier, on the twenty-fourth of June, the summer solstice. This was intended to signify at once his relation to Christ and his well-known word: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” He represented the decreasing sun of the ancient covenant; Christ, the rising sun of the new.

Comp. John iii. 30. This interpretation is given by Augustine, Serm. 12 in Nat. Dom.: “In nativitate Christi dies crescit, in Johannis nativitate decrescit. Profectum plane facit dies, quum mundi Salvator oritur; defectum patitur, quum ultimus prophetarum generatur.”

6. To be just to all the heroes of the faith, the Greek church, after the fourth century, celebrated a feast of All Saints on the Sunday after Pentecost (the Latin festival of the Trinity).

This Sunday is therefore called by the Greeks the Martyrs’ and Saints’ Sunday, ἡ κυριακὴ τῶν ἁγίων πάντων, or τῶν ἁγίων καὶ μαρτύρων. We have a homily of Chrysostomon it: Ἐγκώμιονεἰς τοῦς ἁγίους πάντας τοῦς ἐνὅλῳ τῷ κόσμῳ μαρτυρήσαντες, or De martyribus totius orbis. Hom. lxxiv. Opera, tom. ii. 711 sqq.

7. The feast of the Archangel Michael,

Festum S. Michaelis, archangeli.

§ 86. The Christian Calendar. The Legends of the Saints. The Acta Sanctorum.

This is the place for some observations on the origin and character of the Christian calendar with reference to its ecclesiastical elements, the catalogue of saints and their festivals.

The Christian calendar, as to its contents, dates from the fourth and later centuries; as to its form, it comes down from classical antiquity, chiefly from the Romans, whose numerous calendars contained, together with astronomical and astrological notes, tables also of civil and religious festivals and public sports. Two calendars of Christian Rome still extant, one of the year 354, the other of the year 448,

The latter is found in the Acta Sanct. Jun. tom. vii. p. 176 sqq.

There are, however, still earlier lists of saints’ days, according to the date of the holiday; the oldest is a Roman one of the middle of the fourth century, which contains the memorial days of twelve bishops of Rome and twenty-four martyrs, together with the festival of the birth of Christ and the festival of Peter on the twenty-second of February.

Such tables are the groundwork of the calendar and the martyrologies. At first each community or province had its own catalogue of feasts, hence also its own calendar. Such local registers were sometimes called diptycha

From δίπτυχος, folded double.

Gradually the whole calendar was filled up with the names of saints. As the number of the martyrs exceeded the number of days in the year, the commemoration of several must fall upon the same day, or the canonical hours of cloister devotion must be given up. The oriental calendar is richer in saints from the Old Testament than the occidental.

The Roman Catholic saint-calendars have passed, without material change, to the Protestant church in Germany and other countries. Recently Prof. Piper in Berlin has attempted a thorough evangelical reform of the calendar by rejecting the doubtful or specifically Roman saints, and adding the names of the forerunners of the Reformation and the Reformers and distinguished men of the Protestant churches to the list under their birthdays. To this reform also his Evangelischer Kalender is devoted, which has appeared annually since 1850, and contains brief, popular sketches of the Catholic and Protestant saints received into the improved calendar. Most English and American calendars entirely omit this list of saints.

With the calendars are connected the Martyrologia, or Acta Martyrum, Acta Sanctorum, called by the Greeks Menologia and Menaea.

From μήνmonth; hence, month-register. The Greek Menologies, μηνολόγιαare simply the lists of the martyrs in monthly order, with short biographical notices. The Menaea, μηναῖα, are intended for the public worship and comprise twelve folio volumes, corresponding to the twelve months, with the officia of the saints for every day, and the proper legends and hymns.

The first Acts of the Martyrs come down from the second and third centuries, in part from eye-witnesses, as, for example, the martyrdom of Polycarp (a.d. 167), and of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne in South Gaul; but most of them originated, at least in their present form, in the post-Constantinian age. Eusebius wrote a general martyrology, which is lost. The earliest Latin martyrology is ascribed to Jerome, but at all events contains many later additions; this father, however, furnished valuable contributions to such works in his “Lives of eminent Monks” and his “Catalogue of celebrated Church Teachers.” Pope Gelasius thought good to prohibit or to restrict the church reading of the Acts of the Saints, because the names of the authors were unknown, and superfluous and incongruous additions by heretics or uneducated persons (idiotis) might be introduced. Gregory the Great speaks of a martyrology in use in Rome and elsewhere, which is perhaps the same afterward ascribed to Jerome and widely spread. The presentMartyrologium Romanum, which embraces the saints of all countries, is an expansion of this, and was edited by Baronius with a learned commentary at the command of Gregory XIII. and Sixtus V. in 1586, and afterward enlarged by the Jesuit Heribert Rosweyd.

Rosweyd († 1629) also sketched, toward the close of the sixteenth century, the plan for the celebrated “Acta Sanctorum, quotquot toto orbe coluntur,” which Dr. John van Bolland († 1665) and his companions and continuators, called Bollandists (Henschen, † 1681; Papenbroek, † 1714; Sollier, † 1740; Stiltinck, † 1762, and others of inferior merit), published at Antwerp in fifty-three folio volumes, between the years 1643 and 1794 (including the two volumes of the second series), under the direction of the Jesuits, and with the richest and rarest literary aids.

When Rosweyd’s prospectus, which contemplated only 17 volumes, was shown to Cardinal Bellarmine, he asked: “What is the man’s age?” “Perhaps forty.” “Does he expect to live two hundred years?” More than 250 years have passed since, and still the work is unfinished. The relation of the principal authors is indicated in the following verse:

“Quod Rosweydus praepararat,
Quod Bollandus inchoarat,
Quod Henschenius formarat,
Perfecit (?) Papenbroekius.”

§ 90. Public Worship of the Lord’s Day. Scripture-Reading and Preaching.

J.A. Schmidt: De primitive ecclesiae lectionibus. Helmst. 1697. E. Ranke: Das kirchliche Perikopensystem aus den Ältesten Urkunden der röm. Liturgie. Berlin, 1847. H. T. Tzschirner: De claris Eccles. vet. oratoribus Comment. i.-ix. Lips. 1817 sqq. K. W. F. Paniel: Pragmatische Geschichte der christl. Beredtsamkeit. Leipz. 1839 ff.

The order and particular parts of the ordinary public worship of God remain the same as they were in the previous period. But the strict separation of the service of the Catechumens,

Missa catechumenorum, λειτουργίατῶνκατηχουμένων.

The reading of a portion of the Holy Scriptures continued to be an essential constituent of divine service. Upon the close of the church canon, after the Council of Carthage in 397, and other synods, the reading of uncanonical books (such as writings of the apostolic fathers) was forbidden, with the exception of the legends of the martyrs on their memorial days.

There was as yet no obligatory system of pericopes, like that of the later Greek and Roman churches. The lectio continua, or the reading and exposition of whole books of the Bible, remained in practice till the fifth century, and the selection of books for the different parts and services of the church year was left to the judgment of the bishop. At high festivals, however, such portions were read as bore special reference to the subject of the celebration. By degrees, after the example of the Jewish synagogue,

The Jews, perhaps from the time of Ezra, divided the Old Testament into sections, larger or smaller, called Parashioth (תוֹיּשִׁרְפַּ), to wit, the Pentateuch into54 Parashioth, and the Prophets (i.e., the later historical books and the prophets proper) into as many Haphtharoth; and these sections were read in course on the different Sabbaths. This division is much older than the division into verses.

The lessons were read from the ambo or reading desk by the lector, with suitable formulas of introduction; usually the Epistle first, and then the Gospel; closing with the doxology or the singing of a psalm. Sometimes the deacon read the Gospel from the altar, to give it special distinction as the word of the Lord Himself.

The church fathers earnestly enjoined, besides this, diligent private reading of the Scriptures; especially Chrysostom, who attributed all corruption in the church to the want of knowledge of the Scriptures. Yet he already found himself compelled to combat the assumption that the Bible is a book only for clergy and monks, and not for the people; an assumption which led in the middle age to the notorious papal prohibitions of the Scriptures in the popular tongues. Strictly speaking, the Bible has been made what it was originally intended to be, really a universal book of the people, only by the invention of the art of printing, by the spirit of the Reformation, and by the Bible Societies of modern times. For in the ancient church, and in the middle age, the manuscripts of the Bible were so rare and so dear, and the art of reading was so limited, that the great mass were almost entirely dependent on the fragmentary reading of the Scriptures in public worship. This fact must be well considered, to forestall too unfavorable a judgment of that early age.

The reading of the Scripture was followed by the sermon, based either on the pericope just read, or on a whole book, in consecutive portions. We have from the greatest pulpit orators of antiquity, from Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, connected homilies on Genesis, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles. But on high festivals a text was always selected suitable and usual for the occasion.

Comp. Augustine’s Expos. in Joh. in praef.: “Meminit sanctitas vestra, evangelium secundum Johannem ex ordine lectionum nos solere tractare. Sed quia nunc interposita est solemnitas sanctorum dierum, quibus certas ex evangelio lectiones oportet recitari, quae ita sunt annuae, ut aliae esse non possint, ordo ille quem susceperamus, ex necessitate paululum intermissus est, non omissus.”

Pulpit eloquence in the fourth and fifth centuries reached a high point in the Greek church, and is most worthily represented by Gregory Nazianzen and Chrysostom. But it also often degenerated there into artificial rhetoric, declamatory bombast, and theatrical acting. Hence the abuse of frequent clapping and acclamations of applause among the people.

Κρότος, acclamatio, applausus. Chrysostomand Augustineoften denounced this theatrical disorder, but in vain.

In the Western church the sermon was much less developed, consisted in most cases of a simple practical exhortation, and took the background of the eucharistic sacrifice. Hence it was a frequent thing there for the people to leave the church at the beginning of the sermon; so that many bishops, who had no idea of the free nature of religion and of worship, compelled the people to hear by closing the doors.

The sermon was in general freely delivered from the bishop’s chair or from the railing of the choir (the cancelli), sometimes from the reading-desk. The duty of preaching devolved upon the bishops; and even popes, like Leo I. and Gregory I., frequently preached before the Roman congregation. Preaching was also performed by the presbyters and deacons. Leo I. restricts the right of preaching and teaching to the ordained clergy;

Ep. 62 ad Maxim.: “Praeter eos qui sunt Domini sacerdotes nullus sibi jus docendi et praedicandi audeat vindicare, sive sit ille monachus, sive sit laicus, qui alicujus scientiae nomine glorietur.”

§ 101. Liturgical Vestments.

Besides the liturgical works already cited, Comp. John England (late R.C. bishop of Charleston, S. C., d. 1842): An Historical Explanation of the Vestments, Ceremonies, etc., appertaining to the holy Sacrifice of the Mass (an Introduction to the American Engl. edition of the Roman Missal). Philad. 1843. Fr. Bock. (R.C.): Geschichte der liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters. Bonn, 1856, 2 vols. C. Jos. Hefele: Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte, Archäologie und Liturgik. Vol ii. Tüb. 1864, p. 150 ff.

The stately outward solemnity of public worship, and the strict separation of the hierarchy from the body of the laity, required corresponding liturgical vesture, after the example of the Jewish priesthood and cultus,

To which in general the Greek and Roman system of vestments is very closely allied. On the Jewish sacred vestments, see Ex. xxviii. 1-53; xxxix. 1-31, etc.

In the Greek church the liturgical vestments and ornaments are the sticharion,

Στοιχάριον, στιχάριον(by Goar always translated, dalmatica), a long coat corresponding to the broidered coat (תנֶתׄכְּ, χιτών,tunica, Ex. xxviii. 39) of the Jewish priest, and the alba and dalmatica of the Latin church.

The vestments in the Latin church are the amict or humeral

The linen cloth which the priest, before celebrating, threw about his neck and shoulders, with the prayer: “Impone, Domine, capiti meo galeam salutis ad expugnandos diabolicos excursus.” It is nowhere mentioned before the eighth century. It answers to the Jewish ephod.

These clerical vestments almost all appear to have been more or less in use before the seventh century, though only in public worship; it is impossible exactly to determine the age of each. The use of priestly vestments itself originated in fact in the Old Testament, and undoubtedly passed into the church through the medium of the Jewish Christianity, but of course with many modifications. Constantine the Great presented the bishop Macarius of Jerusalem a splendid stole wrought with gold for use at baptism.

The Catholic ritualists of course give to the various mass-vestments a symbolical interpretation, which is in part derived from the undeniable meaning of the Jewish priestly garments,

On the Jewish sacerdotal vesture and its symbolical meaning, Comp. Braun: Vestitus sacerdotum Hebraeorum, Amstel. 1698; Lundius: Die jüdischen Heiligthümer, pp. 418-445; Baehr: Symbolik des mosaischen Cultus, vol. ii. pp. 61-165.

The color of the liturgical garments was for several centuries white; as in the Jewish sacerdotal vesture the white color, the symbol of light and salvation, prevailed. But gradually five ecclesiastical colors established themselves. The material varied, except that for the amict and the alb linen (as in the Old Testament) was prescribed. According to the present Roman custom the sacred vestments, like other sacred utensils and the holy water, must be blessed by the bishop or a clergyman even appointed for the purpose. The Greeks bless them even before each use of them. The Roman Missal, and other liturgical books, give particular directions in the rubrics for the use of the mass vestments.

In everyday life, for the first five or six centuries the clergy universally wore the ordinary citizens’ dress; then gradually, after the precedent of the Jewish priests

 The prevailing color of the ordinary Jewish priestly costume was white; that of the Christian clerical costume, on the contrary, is black.

§ 102. Religion and Art.

Man is a being intellectual, or thinking and knowing, moral, or willing and acting, and aesthetic, or feeling and enjoying. To these three cardinal faculties corresponds the old trilogy of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and the three provinces of science, or knowledge of the truth, virtue, or practice of the good, and art, or the representation of the beautiful, the harmony of the ideal and the real. These three elements are of equally divine origin and destiny.

Religion is not so much a separate province besides these three, as the elevation and sanctification of all to the glory of God. It represents the idea of holiness, or of union with God, who is the original of all that is true, good, and beautiful. Christianity, as perfect religion, is also perfect humanity. It hates only sin; and this belongs not originally to human nature, but has invaded it from without. It is a leaven which pervades the whole lump. It aims at a harmonious unfolding of all the gifts and powers of the soul. It would redeem and regenerate the whole man, and bring him into blessed fellowship with God. It enlightens the understanding, sanctifies the will, gives peace to the heart, and consecrates even the body a temple of the Holy Ghost. The ancient word: “Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto,” is fully true only of the Christian. “All things are yours,” says the Apostle. All things are of God, and for God. Of these truths we must never lose sight, notwithstanding the manifold abuses or imperfect and premature applications of them.

Hence there is a Christian art, as well as a Christian science, a spiritual eloquence, a Christian virtue. Feeling and imagination are as much in need of redemption, and capable of sanctification, as reason and will.

The proper and highest mission of art lies in the worship of God. We are to worship God “in the beauty of holiness.” All science culminates in theology and theosophy, all art becomes perfect in cultus. Holy Scripture gives it this position, and brings it into the closest connection with religion, from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of the Revelation, from the paradise of innocence to the new glorified earth. This is especially true of the two most spiritual and noble arts, of poetry and music, which proclaim the praise of God—in all the great epochs of the history of his kingdom from the beginning to the consummation. A considerable part of the Bible: the Psalms, the book of Job, the song of Solomon, the parables, the Revelation, and many portions of the historical, prophetical, and didactic books, are poetical, and that in the purest and highest sense of the word. Christianity was introduced into the world with the song of the heavenly host, and the consummation of the church will be also the consummation of poetry and song in the service of the heavenly sanctuary.

Art has always, and in all civilized nations, stood in intimate connection with worship. Among the heathen it ministered to idolatry. Hence the aversion or suspicion of the early Christians towards it. But the same is true of the philosophy of the Greeks, and the law of the Romans; yet philosophy and law are not in themselves objectionable. All depends on the spirit which animates these gifts, and the purpose which they are made to serve.

The great revolution in the outward condition of the church under Constantine dissipated the prejudices against art and the hindrances to its employment in the service of the church. There now arose a Christian art which has beautified and enriched the worship of God, and created immortal monuments of architecture, painting, poetry, and melody, for the edification of all ages; although, as the cultus of the early church in general perpetuated many elements of Judaism and heathenism, so the history of Christian art exhibits many impurities and superstitions which provoke and justify protest. Artists have corrupted art, as theologians theology, and priests the church. But the remedy for these imperfections is not the abolition of art and the banishment of it from the church, but the renovation and ever purer shaping of it by the spirit and in the service of Christianity, which is the religion of truth, of beauty, and of holiness.

From this time, therefore, church history also must bring the various arts, in their relation to Christian worship, into the field of its review. Henceforth there is a history of Christian architecture, sculpture, painting, and above all of Christian poetry and music.

§ 104. The Consecration of Churches.

New churches were consecrated with great solemnity by prayer, singing, the communion, eulogies of present bishops, and the depositing of relics of saints.

I This last was, according to Ambrose, Epist. 54, the custom in Rome, and certainly wherever such relics were to be had.

After the Jewish precedent,

Τὰ ἐγκαίνια, in memory of the purification of the temple under the Maccabees, I Macc. iv. 59; John x. 22.

Churches were dedicated either to the holy Trinity, or to one of the three divine Persons, especially Christ, or to the Virgin Mary, or to apostles, especially Peter, Paul, and John, or to distinguished martyrs and saints.

The idea of dedication, of course, by no means necessarily involves the superstitious notion of the omnipresent God being inclosed in a definite place. On the contrary, Solomon had long before said at the dedication of the temple at Jerusalem: “Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded.” When Athanasius was once censured for assembling the congregation on Easter, for want of room, in a newly built but not yet consecrated church, he appealed to the injunction of the Lord, that we enter into our closet to pray, as consecrating every place. Chrysostom urged that every house should be a church, and every head of a family a spiritual shepherd, remembering the account which he must give even for his children and servants.

Hom. vi. in Gen., § 2 Ἐκκλησίαν ποίησόν σου τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ γὰρ καὶ ἐπεύθυνος εἶ καὶ τῆς τῶν παιδίων καὶ τῆς οἰκετῶν σωτηρίας .

§ 105. Interior Arrangement of Churches.

The interior arrangement of the Christian churches in part imitated the temple at Jerusalem, in part proceeded directly, from the Christian spirit. It exhibits, therefore, like the whole catholic system, a mixture of Judaism and Christianity. At the bottom of it lay the ideas of the priesthood and of sacrifice, and of fellowship with God administered thereby.

Accordingly, in every large church after Constantine there were three main divisions, which answered, on the one hand, to the divisions of Solomon’s temple, on the other, to the three classes of attendants, the catechumens, the faithful, and the priests, or the three stages of approach to God. The evangelical idea of immediate access of the whole believing congregation to the throne of grace, does not yet appear. The priesthood everywhere comes between.

1. The portico: In this again must be distinguished:

(a) The inner portico, a covered hall which belonged to the church itself, and was called πρόναος, or commonly, from its long, narrow shape,νάρθηξ, ferula, i.e., literally, staff, rod.

Sometimes the narthex again was divided into two rooms, the upper place for the kneelers (locus substratorum), i.e., catechumens who might participate, kneeling, in the prayers after the sermon (hence genuflectentes, γονυκλίνοντεςand the lower place, bordering on the outer portico, for mere hearers, Jews, and pagans (locus audientium).

(b) The outer portico, αὐλή, atrium, also locus lugentium or hiemantium, which was open, and not in any way enclosed within the sacred walls, hence not a part of the house of God properly so called. Here those under heavy penance, the “weepers”

Flentes, hiemantes.

In this outer portico, or atrium, stood the laver,

Κρήνη, cantharus, phiala.

After about the ninth century, when churches were no longer built with spacious porticoes, this laver was transferred to the church itself, and fixed at the doors in the form of a holywater basin, supposed to be an imitation of the brazen sea in the priest’s court of Solomon’s temple.

1 Kings vii. 23-26; 2 Chron. iv. 2-5.

2. The temple proper,

Ναός.

About the middle of the main nave was the pulpit or the ambo,

Ἄμβων from ἀναβαίνω, pulpitum, suggestus. Hence the English pulpit, while the corresponding German Kanzelis derived from cancelli.