Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History Part 16

The Arian, Manichaean, Marcionite, and Monothelite heresies spread, during this century, through the Greek Church, and, where the Arabians ruled, the Nestorians and Monophysites also flourished. In the Latin Church a phase of the Nestorian heresy made its way, under the name of Adoptianism, a name given because its adherents regarded Christ, so far as his manhood was concerned, as the Son of G.o.d by adoption only.

CENTURY IX.

Christendom, during this century, as during the preceding one, was threatened and hara.s.sed by the inroads of Mahommedan powers, and the first gleams of returning light began to penetrate its thick darkness--light proceeding from the Arabians and the Saracens, the restorers of knowledge and of science. It is not here our duty to trace that marvellous work of the revival of thought--thought which Christianity had slain, but which, revived by Mahommedanism, was destined to issue in the new birth of heretic philosophy. While this work was proceeding among the Saracens, the Arabians, and the Moors, Christendom went on its way, degraded, vicious, and superst.i.tious; only here and there an effort at learning was made, and some few went to the Arabian schools, and returned with some tincture of knowledge. John Scotus Erigena, a subtle and acute thinker, left behind him works which have made some regard him as the founder of the _Realist_ school of the middle ages, the school which followed Aristotle, in opposition to the _Nominalists_, who held with Zeno and the Stoics. Erigena taught that the soul would be re-absorbed into the divine spirit, from which it had originally emanated; from G.o.d all things had come--to Him would they ultimately return; G.o.d alone was eternal, and in the end nothing but G.o.d would exist. Some of Erigena's works naturally fell under the displeasure of the Church, and were duly burned: he was a philosopher, and therefore dangerous.

While this slight effort at thought was thus frowned upon, vice made its way unchecked and unrebuked by the authorities. "The impiety and licentiousness of the greater part of the clergy arose, at this time, to an enormous height, and stand upon record in the unanimous complaints of the most candid and impartial writers of this century. In the East, tumult, discord, conspiracies, and treason reigned uncontrolled, and all things were carried by violence and force. These abuses appeared in many things, but particularly in the election of the Patriarchs of Constantinople.... In the western provinces, the bishops were become voluptuous and effeminate to a very high degree. They pa.s.sed their lives amidst the splendour of courts, and the pleasures of a luxurious indolence, which corrupted their taste, extinguished their zeal, and rendered them incapable of performing the solemn duties of their function; while the inferior clergy were sunk in licentiousness, minded nothing but sensual gratifications, and infected with the most heinous vices the flock whom it was the very business of their ministry to preserve, or to deliver from the contagion of iniquity. Besides, the ignorance of the sacred order was, in many places, so deplorable that few of them could either read or write, and still fewer were capable of expressing their wretched notions with any degree of method or perspicuity" (p. 193). "Many other causes also contributed to dishonour the Church, by introducing into it a corrupt ministry. A n.o.bleman who, through want of talents, activity, or courage, was rendered incapable of appearing with dignity in the cabinet, or with honour in the field, immediately turned his views towards the Church, aimed at a distinguished place among its chiefs and rulers, and became, in consequence, a contagious example of stupidity and vice to the inferior clergy. The patrons of churches, in whom resided the right of election, unwilling to submit their disorderly conduct to the keen censure of zealous and upright pastors, industriously looked for the most abject, ignorant, and worthless ecclesiastics, to whom they committed the cure of souls" (p. 193). Of the Roman pontiffs, Mosheim says: "The greatest part of them are only known by the flagitious actions that have transmitted their names with infamy to our times" (p. 194). And "the enormous vices that must have covered so many pontiffs with infamy in the judgment of the wise, formed not the least obstacle to their ambition in these memorable times, nor hindered them from extending their influence and augmenting their authority both in church and state"

(p. 195). Among the vast ma.s.s of forgeries which gradually built up the supremacy of the Roman see, the famous Isidorian Decretals deserve a word of notice. They were issued about A.D. 845, and consisted of "about one hundred pretended decrees of the early Popes, together with certain spurious writings of other church dignitaries and acts of synods. This forgery produced an immense extension of the papal power. It displaced the old system of church government, divesting it of the republican attributes it had possessed, and transforming it into an absolute monarchy. It brought the bishops into subjection to Rome, and made the pontiff the supreme judge of the clergy of the whole Christian world. It prepared the way for the great attempt, subsequently made by Hildebrand, to convert the states of Europe into a theocratic priest kingdom, with the Pope at its head" (Draper's "Conflict of Religion and Science," p.

271). We note during this century a remarkable growth of saints.

Everyone wanted a saint through whom to approach G.o.d, and the supply kept pace with the demand. "This preposterous multiplication of saints was a new source of abuses and frauds. It was thought necessary to write the lives of these celestial patrons, in order to procure for them the veneration and confidence of a deluded mult.i.tude; and here lying wonders were invented, and all the resources of forgery and fable exhausted to celebrate exploits which had never been performed, and to perpetuate the memory of holy persons who had never existed" (p. 200). The contest on images still raged furiously, success being now on the one side, now on the other; various councils were called by either party, until, in A.D.

879, a council at Constantinople, reckoned by the Greeks as the eighth general council, sanctioned the wors.h.i.+p of images, which thereafter triumphed in the East. In the West, the opposition to image-wors.h.i.+p gradually died away. The _Filioque_ contest also continued hotly and widened the breach between East and West yet more. The final separation was not long delayed. The ever-increasing jealousy between Rome and Constantinople had at last reached a height which made even nominal union impossible, and the smouldering fire burst into sudden flame. In A.D. 858 Photius was made Patriarch of Constantinople, by the Emperor Michael, in the room of Ignatius, deprived and banished by that prince.

A council, held at Constantinople in A.D. 861, endorsed the appointment of the emperor; but Ignatius appealed to Rome, and Pope Nicholas I.

readily took up his quarrel. A council was held at Rome, in A.D. 862, in which the pontiff excommunicated Photius and his adherents. It was answered by one at Constantinople, in A.D. 866, wherein Nicholas was p.r.o.nounced unworthy of his office and outside the pale of Christian communion. Yet another council of Constantinople, A.D. 869, approved the action of Basilius, the new emperor, who recalled Ignatius, and imprisoned Photius. When Ignatius died, Photius was reinstated (A.D.

878), and he was acknowledged by the Roman pontiff, John VIII., at another council of Constantinople, A.D. 879, on the understanding that the jurisdiction over Bulgaria, claimed both by Pope and Patriarch, should be definitely yielded to Rome. This, however, was not done; and the Pope sent a legate to Constantinople, recalling his declaration in favour of Photius. The legate, Marinus, was cast into prison; and when he was later raised to the pontificate, he remembered the outrage, and anew excommunicated Photius. A.D. 886 saw the fall and imprisonment of Photius, and union might have been maintained but for the extravagant demands of the Roman pontiff, who required the degradation of all priests and bishops ordained by Photius. The Greeks indignantly refused, and at last the great schism took place, which severed from each other entirely the Eastern and the Western Churches.

The ancient heresy of the Paulicians had not yet died out, spite of having suffered much persecution at Catholic hands, and under the Emperors Michael and Leo, a fierce attack upon these unfortunate beings took place. They were hunted down and executed without mercy, and at last they turned upon their persecutors, and revenged themselves by murdering the bishop, magistrates, and judges in Armenia, after which they fled to the countries under Saracen rule. After a while, they gradually returned to the Greek empire; but when the Empress Theodora was regent, during her son's minority, she issued a stern decree against them. "The decree was severe, but the cruelty with which it was put in execution, by those who were sent into Armenia for that purpose, was horrible beyond expression; for these ministers of wrath, after confiscating the goods of above a hundred thousand of that miserable people, put their possessors to death in the most barbarous manner, and made them expire slowly in a variety of the most exquisite tortures" (p.

212).

In addition to the heresies inherited from the previous centuries, three new ones, important in their issues, arose to divide yet more the divided indivisible Church. A monk, named Pascasius Radbert, wrote a treatise (A.D. 831 and 845), in which he maintained that, at the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine became changed, by consecration, into the body and blood of Christ, and that this body "was the same body that was born of the Virgin, that suffered upon the cross, and was raised from the dead" (p. 205). Charles the Bald bade Erigena and Ratramn (or Bertramn) draw up the true doctrine of the Church, and the long controversy began which is continued even in the present day.

The second great dispute arose on the question of predestination and divine grace. G.o.deschalcus, an eminent Saxon monk, returning from Rome in A.D. 847, resided for a s.p.a.ce in Verona, where he spoke much on predestination, affirming that G.o.d had, from all eternity, predestined some to heaven and others to h.e.l.l. He was condemned at a council held in Mayence, A.D. 848, and in the following year, at another council, he was again condemned, and was flogged until he burned, with his own hand, the apology for his opinions he had presented at Mayence. The third great controversy regarded the manner of Christ's birth, and monks furiously disputed whether or no Christ was born after the fas.h.i.+on of other infants. The details of this dispute need not here be entered into.

CENTURY X.

"The deplorable state of Christianity in this century, arising partly from that astonis.h.i.+ng ignorance that gave a loose rein both to superst.i.tion and immorality, and partly from an unhappy concurrence of causes of another kind, is unanimously lamented by the various writers who have transmitted to us the history of these miserable times" (p.

213). Yet "the gospel" spread. The Normans embraced "a religion of which they were totally ignorant" (p. 214), A.D. 912, because Charles the Simple of France offered Count Rollo a large territory on condition that he would marry his daughter and embrace Christianity: Rollo gladly accepted the territory and its enc.u.mbrances. Poland came next into the fold of the Church, for the Duke of Poland, Micislaus, was persuaded by his wife to profess Christianity, A.D. 965, and Pope John III. promptly sent a bishop and a train of priests to convert the duke's subjects.

"But the exhortations and endeavours of these devout missionaries, who were unacquainted with the language of the people they came to instruct [how effective must have been their arguments!] would have been entirely without effect, had they not been accompanied with the edicts and penal laws, the promises and threats of Micislaus, which dejected the courage and conquered the obstinacy of the reluctant Poles" (p. 214). "The Christian religion was established in Russia by means every way similar to those that had occasioned its propagation in Poland" (p. 215); the Greek wife of the Russian duke persuaded him to adopt her creed, and he was baptized A.D. 987. Mosheim a.s.sumes that the Russian people followed their princes of their own accord, since "we have, at least, no account of any compulsion or violence being employed in their conversion" (p.

215); if the Russians adopted Christianity without compulsion or violence, all we can say is, that their conversion is unique. The Danes were converted in A.D. 949, Otto the Great having defeated them, and having made it an imperative condition of peace, that they should profess Christianity. The Norwegians accepted the religion of Jesus on the same terms. Thus the greater part of Europe became Christian, and we even hear a cry raised by Pope Sylvester II. for the deliverance of Palestine from the Mahommedans--for a holy war. Christianity having now become so strong, learning had become proportionately weak; it had been sinking lower and lower during each succeeding epoch, and in this tenth century it reached its deepest stage of degradation. "The deplorable ignorance of this barbarous age, in which the drooping arts were entirely neglected, and the sciences seemed to be upon the point of expiring for want of encouragement, is unanimously confessed and lamented by all the writers who have transmitted to us any accounts of this period of time" (p. 218). In vain a more enlightened emperor in the East strove to revive learning and encourage study: "many of the most celebrated authors of antiquity were lost, at this time, through the sloth and negligence of the Greeks" (p. 219). "Nor did the cause of philosophy fare better than that of literature. Philosophers, indeed, there were; and, among them, some that were not dest.i.tute of genius and abilities; but none who rendered their names immortal by productions that were worthy of being transmitted to posterity" (p. 219). So low, under the influence of Christianity, had sunk the literature of Greece--Greece Pagan, which once brought forth Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Euclid, Zenophon, and many another mighty one, whose fame rolls down the ages--that Greece had become Greece Christian, and the vitality of her motherhood had been drained from her, and left her without strength to conceive men. In the West things were yet worse--instead of Rome Pagan, that had spread light and civilization--the Rome of Cicero, of Virgil, of Lucretius--we have Rome Christian, spreader of darkness and of degradation, the Rome of the Popes and the monks. The Latins "were, almost without exception, sunk in the most brutish and barbarous ignorance, so that, according to the unanimous accounts of the most credible writers, nothing could be more melancholy and deplorable than the darkness that reigned in the western world during this century....

In the seminaries of learning, such as they were, the seven liberal sciences were taught in the most unskilful and miserable manner, and that by the monks, who esteemed the arts and sciences no further than as they were subservient to the interests of religion, or, to speak more properly, to the views of superst.i.tion" (p. 219). But the light from Arabia was struggling to penetrate Christendom. Gerbert, a native of France, travelled into Spain, and studied in the Arabian schools of Cordova and Seville, under Arabian doctors; he developed mathematical ability, and returned into Christendom with some amount of learning: raised to the papal throne, under the name of Sylvester II., he tried to restore the study of science and philosophy, and found that his geometrical figures "were regarded by the monks as magical operations,"

and he himself "as a magician and a disciple of Satan" (p. 220).

The vice of the clergy was something terrible. "These corruptions were mounted to the most enormous height in that dismal period of the Church which we have now before us. Both in the eastern and western provinces, the clergy were, for the most part, composed of a most worthless set of men, shamefully illiterate and stupid, ignorant, more especially in religious matters, equally enslaved to sensuality and superst.i.tion, and capable of the most abominable and flagitious deeds. This dismal degeneracy of the sacred order was, according to the most credible accounts, princ.i.p.ally owing to the pretended chiefs and rulers of the universal Church, who indulged themselves in the commission of the most odious crimes, and abandoned themselves to the lawless impulse of the most licentious pa.s.sions without reluctance or remorse--who confounded, in short, all difference between just and unjust, to satisfy their impious ambition, and whose spiritual empire was such a diversified scene of iniquity and violence as never was exhibited under any of those temporal tyrants who have been the scourges of mankind" (p. 221). Such is the verdict pa.s.sed on Christian rule by a Christian historian. In the East we see such men as Theophylact; "this _exemplary_ prelate, who sold every ecclesiastical benefice as soon as it became vacant, had in his stable above 2000 hunting horses, which he fed with pignuts, pistachios, dates, dried grapes, figs steeped in the most exquisite wines, to all which he added the richest perfumes. One Holy Thursday, as he was celebrating high-ma.s.s, his groom brought him the joyful news that one of his favourite mares had foaled; upon which he threw down the Liturgy, left the church, and ran in raptures to the stable, where, having expressed his joy at that grand event, he returned to the altar to finish the divine service, which he had left interrupted during his absence" (p. 221, note). We shall see, in a moment, how the ma.s.ses of the people were housed and fed while such insane luxury surrounded horses. In the west, the weary tale of the Roman pontiffs cannot all be narrated here. Take the picture as drawn by Hallam: "This dreary interval is filled up, in the annals of the papacy, by a series of revolutions and crimes. Six popes were deposed, two murdered, one mutilated. Frequently two, or even three, compet.i.tors, among whom it is not always possible by any genuine criticism to distinguish the true shepherd, drove each other alternately from the city. A few respectable names appear thinly scattered through this darkness; and sometimes, perhaps, a pope who had acquired estimation by his private virtues may be distinguished by some encroachment on the rights of princes, or the privileges of national churches. But, in general, the pontiffs of that age had neither leisure nor capacity to perfect the great system of temporal supremacy, and looked rather to a vile profit from the sale of episcopal confirmations, or of exemptions to monasteries. The corruption of the head extended naturally to all other members of the Church. All writers concur in stigmatizing the dissoluteness and neglect of decency that prevailed among the clergy. Though several codes of ecclesiastical discipline had been compiled by particular prelates, yet neither these nor the ancient canons were much regarded. The bishops, indeed, who were to enforce them, had most occasion to dread their severity. They were obtruded upon their sees, as the supreme pontiffs were upon that of Rome, by force or corruption. A child of five years old was made Archbishop of Rheims. The see of Narbonne was purchased for another at the age of ten" ("Europe during the Middle Ages," p. 353, ed. 1869).

John X. made pope at the solicitation of his mistress Theodora, the mother-in-law of the sovereign, and murdered at the instance of Theodora's daughter, Marozia; John XI., illegitimate son of the same Marozia, and of the celibate pontiff, Sergius III.; Boniface VII.

expelled, banished, returning and murdering the reigning pope: what avails it to chronicle these monsters? Below the popes, a clergy as vicious as their rulers, squandering money, plundered from the people in dissoluteness and luxury. And the people, what of them?

As late as A.D. 1430 the houses of the peasantry were "constructed of stones put together without mortar; the roofs were of turf--a stiffened bull's-hide served for a door. The food consisted of coa.r.s.e vegetable products, such as peas, and even the bark of trees. In some places they were unacquainted with bread. Cabins of reeds plastered with mud, houses of wattled stakes, chimneyless peat fires, from which there was scarcely an escape for the smoke, dens of physical and moral pollution swarming with vermin, wisps of straw twisted round the limbs to keep off the cold, the ague-stricken peasant with no help except shrine-cure," i.e., cure by the touching bone of saint, or image of virgin (Draper's "Conflict between Religion and Science," p. 265). Even among the wealthy, the life was coa.r.s.e and rough; carpets were unknown; drainage never thought of. The Anglo-Saxon "'n.o.bles, devoted to gluttony and voluptuousness, never visited the church, but the matins and the ma.s.s were read over to them by a hurrying priest in their bed-chambers, before they rose, themselves not listening. The common people were a prey to the more powerful; their property was seized, their bodies dragged away to distant countries; their maidens were either thrown into a brothel or sold for slaves. Drinking, day and night, was the general pursuit: vices, the companions of inebriety, followed, effeminating the manly mind.' The baronial castles were dens of robbers. The Saxon chronicler [William of Malmesbury, from whom the quotation above]

records how men and women were caught and dragged into those strongholds, hung up by their thumbs or feet, fire applied to them, knotted strings twisted round their heads, and many other torments inflicted to extort ransom" (Ibid, p. 266). When the barons had nearly finished their evil lives, the church stepped in, claiming her share of the plunder and the wealth thus ama.s.sed, and opening the gates of paradise to the dying thief. The cities were as wretched as their inhabitants: no paving, no cleaning, no lighting. In the country the old Roman roads were unmended, unkept; Europe was slipping backwards into uttermost barbarism. Meanwhile things were very different where the blighting power of Christianity was not in the ascendant. "Europe at the present day does not offer more taste, more refinement, more elegance, than might have been seen, at the epoch of which we are speaking, in the capitals of the Spanish Arabs. Their streets were lighted and solidly paved. The houses were frescoed and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by furnaces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken and gluttonous wa.s.sail orgies of their northern neighbours, the feasts of the Saracens were marked by sobriety. Wine was prohibited.... In the tenth century, the Khalif Hakem II. had made beautiful Andalusia the paradise of the world. Christians, Mussulmans, Jews, mixed together without restraint.... All learned men, no matter from what country they came, or what their religious views, were welcomed. The khalif had in his palace a manufactory of books, and copyists, binders, illuminators. He kept book-buyers in all the great cities of Asia and Africa. His library contained 400,000 volumes, superbly bound and illuminated" (Ibid, pp. 141, 142). When the Christians in the fifteenth century seized "beautiful Andalusia," they erected the Inquisition, burned the books, burned the people, banished the Jews and the Moors, and founded the miserable land known as modern Spain.

There was but little heresy during this melancholy century; people did not think enough even to think badly. The Paulicians spread through Bulgaria, and established themselves there under a patriarch of their own. Some Arians still existed. Some Anthropomorphites gave some trouble, maintaining that G.o.d sat on a golden throne, and was served by angels with wings: their "heresy" is, however, directly supported by the Scriptures. A.D. 999, a man named Lentard began to speak against the wors.h.i.+p of images, and the payment of t.i.thes to priests, and a.s.serted that in the Old Testament prophecies truth and falsehood are mingled.

His disciples seem to have merged into the Albigenses in the next century.

The year A.D. 1000 deserves a special word of notice. Christians fancied that the world was to last for but one thousand years after the birth of Christ, and that it would therefore come to an end in A.D. 1000. "Many charters begin with these words: 'As the world is now drawing to its close.' An army marching under the emperor Otho I. was so terrified by an eclipse of the sun, which it conceived to announce this consummation, as to disperse hastily on all sides" ("Europe during the Middle Ages,"

Hallam, P. 599) "Prodigious numbers of people abandoned all their civil connections, and their parental relations, and giving over to the churches or monasteries all their lands, treasures, and worldly effects, repaired with the utmost precipitation to Palestine, where they imagined that Christ would descend to judge the world. Others devoted themselves by a solemn and voluntary oath to the service of the churches, convents, and priesthood, whose slaves, they became in the most rigorous sense of that word, performing daily their heavy tasks; and all this from a notion that the Supreme Judge would diminish the severity of their sentence, and look upon them with a more favourable and propitious eye, on account of their having made themselves the slaves of his ministers.

When an eclipse of the sun or moon happened to be visible, the cities were deserted, and their miserable inhabitants fled for refuge to hollow caverns, and hid themselves among the craggy rocks, and under the bending summits of steep mountains. The opulent attempted to bribe the Deity and the saintly tribe, by rich donations conferred upon the sacerdotal and monastic orders, who were looked upon as the immediate vicegerents of heaven" (p. 226). Thus the Church still reaped wealth out of the fear of the people she deluded, and while fields lay unsown, and houses stood unrepaired, and the foundations of famine were laid, Mother Church gathered lands and money into her capacious lap, and troubled little about the starving children, provided she herself could wax fat on the good things of the world which she professed to have renounced.

CENTURY XI.

The Prussians, during this century, were driven into the fold of the Church. A Christian missionary, Adalbert, bishop of Prague, had been murdered by the "fierce and savage Prussians," and in order to show the civilising results of the gentle Christian creed, Boleslaus, king of Poland, entered "into a b.l.o.o.d.y war with the Prussians, and he obtained, by the force of penal laws and of a victorious, army, what Adalbert could not effect by exhortation and argument. He dragooned this savage people into the Christian Church" (p. 230). Some of his followers tried a gentler method of conversion, and were murdered by the Prussians, who clearly saw no reason why Christians should do all the killing. We have already seen that Sylvester II. called upon the Christian princes to commence a "holy war" against "the infidels" who held the holy places of Christianity. Gregory VII. strove to stir them up in like fas.h.i.+on, and had gathered together an army of upwards of 50,000 men, whom he proposed to lead in person into Palestine. The Pope, however, quarrelled with Henry IV., emperor of Germany, and his project fell through. At the close of this century, the long-talked of effort was made. Peter the Hermit, who had travelled through Palestine, came into Europe and related in all directions tales of the sufferings of the Christians under the rule of the "barbarous" Saracens. He appealed to Urban II., the then Pope, and Urban, who at first discouraged him, seeing that Peter had succeeded in rousing the most warlike nations of Christian Europe into enthusiasm, called a council at Placentia, A.D. 1095, and appealed to the Christian princes to take up the cause of the Cross. The council was not successful, and Urban summoned another at Clermont, and himself addressed the a.s.sembly. "It is the will of G.o.d" was the shout that answered him, and the people flew to arms. "Every means was used to excite an epidemical frenzy, the remission of penance, the dispensation from those practices of self-denial which superst.i.tion imposed or suspended at pleasure, the absolution of all sins, and the a.s.surance of eternal felicity. None doubted that such as persisted in the war received immediately the reward of martyrdom. False miracles and fanatical prophecies, which were never so frequent, wrought up the enthusiasm to a still higher pitch. [Mosheim states, p. 231, that Peter the Hermit carried about with him a letter from heaven, calling on all true Christians to deliver their brethren from the infidel yoke.] And these devotional feelings, which are usually thwarted and balanced by other pa.s.sions, fell in with every motive that could influence the men of that time, with curiosity, restlessness, the love of licence, thirst for war, emulation, ambition. Of the princes who a.s.sumed the cross, some, probably from the beginning, speculated upon forming independent establishments in the East. In later periods, the temporal benefits of undertaking a crusade undoubtedly blended themselves with less selfish considerations. Men resorted to Palestine, as in modern times they have done to the colonies, in order to redeem their time, or repair their fortune. Thus Gui de Lusignan, after flying from France for murder, was ultimately raised to the throne of Jerusalem. To the more vulgar cla.s.s were held out inducements which, though absorbed in the more overruling fanaticism of the first crusade, might be exceedingly efficacious when it began rather to flag. During the time that a crusader bore the cross, he was free from suit for his debts, and the interest of them was entirely abolished; he was exempted, in some instances, at least, from taxes, and placed under the protection of the Church, so that he could not be impleaded in any civil court, except on criminal charges, or disputes relating to land" ("Europe during the Middle Ages," Hallam, pp.

29, 30). Thus fanaticism and earthly pleasures and benefits all pushed men in the same direction, and Europe flung itself upon Palestine. Men, women, and children, poured eastwards in that first crusade, and this mixed vanguard of the coming army of warriors was led by Peter the Hermit and Gaultier Sans-Avoir. This vanguard was "a motley a.s.semblage of monks, prost.i.tutes, artists, labourers, lazy tradesmen, merchants, boys, girls, slaves, malefactors, and profligate debauchees;" "it was princ.i.p.ally composed of the lowest dregs of the mult.i.tude, who were animated solely by the prospect of spoil and plunder, and hoped to make their fortunes by this holy campaign" (p. 232). "This first division, in their march through Hungary and Thrace, committed the most flagitious crimes, which so incensed the inhabitants of the countries through which they pa.s.sed, particularly those of Hungary and Turcomania, that they rose up in arms and ma.s.sacred the greatest part of them" (Ibid). "Father Maimbourg, notwithstanding his immoderate zeal for the holy war, and that fabulous turn which enables him to represent it in the most favourable points of view, acknowledges frankly that the first division of this prodigious army committed the most abominable enormities in the countries through which they pa.s.sed, and that there was no kind of insolence, in justice, impurity, barbarity, and violence, of which they were not guilty. Nothing, perhaps, in the annals of history can equal the flagitious deeds of this infernal rabble" (Ibid, note). Few of these unhappy wretches reached the Holy Land. "To engage in the crusade and to perish in it, were almost synonymous" (Hallam, p. 30), even for those who entered Palestine. The loss of life was something terrible. "We should be warranted by contemporary writers in stating the loss of the Christians alone during this period at nearly a million; but at the least computation, it must have exceeded half that number" (Ibid). The real army, under G.o.dfrey de Bouillon, consisted of some 80,000 well-appointed horse and foot. But at Nice the crowd of crusaders numbered 700,000, after the great slaughter in Hungary. Jerusalem was taken, A.D. 1099, and it was there "where their triumph was consummated, that it was stained with the most atrocious ma.s.sacre; not limited to the hour of resistance, but renewed deliberately even after that famous penitential procession to the holy sepulchre, which might have calmed their ferocious dispositions if, through the misguided enthusiasm of the enterprise, it had not been rather calculated to excite them" (Ibid, p.

31). The last crusade occurred A.D. 1270, and between the first in 1096 and the last in 1270, human lives were extinguished in numbers it is impossible to reckon, increasing ever the awful sum total of the misery lying at the foot of the blood-red cross of Christendom.

A collateral advantage accrued to the clergy through the crusades; "their wealth, continually acc.u.mulated, enabled them to become the regular purchasers of landed estates, especially in the time of the crusades, when the fiefs of the n.o.bility were constantly in the market for sale or mortgage" (Ibid, p. 333).

The last vestiges of nominal paganism were erased in this century, and it remained only under Christian names. Capital punishment was proclaimed against all who wors.h.i.+pped the old deities under their old t.i.tles, and "this dreadful severity contributed much more towards the extirpation of paganism, than the exhortations and instructions of ignorant missionaries, who were unacquainted with the true nature of the gospel, and dishonoured its pure and holy doctrines by their licentious lives and their superst.i.tious practices" (p. 236). Learning began to revive, as men, educated in the Arabian schools, gradually spread over Europe; thus: "the school of Salernum, in the kingdom of Naples, was renowned above all others for the study of physic in this century, and vast numbers crowded thither from all the provinces of Europe to receive instruction in the art of healing; but the medical precepts which rendered the doctors of Salernum so famous were all derived from the writings of the Arabians, or from the schools of the Saracens in Spain and Africa" (p. 237). "About the year 1050, the face of philosophy began to change, and the science of logic a.s.sumed a new aspect. This revolution began in France, where several of the books of Aristotle had been brought from the schools of the Saracens in Spain, and it was effected by a set of men highly renowned for their abilities and genius, such as Berenger, Roscellinus, Hildebert, and after them by Gilbert de la Porre, the famous Abelard and others" (p. 238). Thus we see that in science, in philosophy, in logic, we alike owe to Arabia the revival of thought in Christendom. Progress, however, was very slow, and the thought was not yet strong enough to arouse the fears of the Church, so it spread for a while in peace.

Hallam sums up for us the state of learning, or rather of ignorance, during the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, and his account may well find its place here. "When Latin had thus ceased to be a living language, the whole treasury of knowledge was locked up from the eyes of the people. The few who might have imbibed a taste for literature, if books had been accessible to them, were reduced to abandon pursuits that could only be cultivated through a kind of education not easily within their reach. Schools confined to cathedrals and monasteries, and exclusively designed for the purposes of religion, afforded no encouragement or opportunities to the laity. The worst effect was that, as the newly-formed languages were hardly made use of in writing, Latin being still preserved in all legal instruments and public correspondence, the very use of letters, as well as of books, was forgotten. For many centuries, to sum up the account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name. Their charters, till the use of seals became general, were subscribed with the mark of the cross. Still more extraordinary it was to find one who had any tincture of learning. Even admitting every indistinct commendation of a monkish biographer (with whom a knowledge of church music would pa.s.s for literature), we could make out a very short list of scholars. None certainly were more distinguished as such than Charlemagne and Alfred. But the former, unless we reject a very plain testimony, was incapable of writing; and Alfred found difficulty in making a translation from the pastoral instruction of St. Gregory, on account of his imperfect knowledge of Latin. Whatever mention, therefore, we find of learning and the learned, during these dark ages, must be understood to relate only to such as were within the pale of clergy, which indeed was pretty extensive, and comprehended many who did not exercise the offices of religious ministry. But even the clergy were, for a long period, not very materially superior, as a body, to the uninstructed laity. An inconceivable cloud of ignorance overspread the whole face of the Church, hardly broken by a few glimmering lights, who owe almost the whole of their distinction to the surrounding darkness.... Of this prevailing ignorance it is easy to produce abundant testimony. Contracts were made verbally, for want of notaries capable of drawing up charters; and these, when written, were frequently barbarous and ungrammatical to an incredible degree. For some considerable intervals, scarcely any monument of literature has been preserved, except a few jejune chronicles, the vilest legends of saints, or verses equally dest.i.tute of spirit and metre. In almost every council the ignorance of the clergy forms a subject for reproach. It is a.s.serted by one held in 992, that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself who knew the first element of letters. Not one priest of a thousand in Spain, about the age of Charlemagne, could address a common letter of salutation to another. In England, Alfred declares that he could not recollect a single priest south of the Thames (the most civilised part of England) at the time of his accession who understood the ordinary prayers, or could translate Latin into his mother-tongue.

Nor was this better in the time of Dunstan, when it is said, none of the clergy knew how to write or translate a Latin letter. The homilies which they preached were compiled for their use by some bishops, from former works of the same kind, or the writings of the Christian fathers.... If we would listen to some literary historians, we should believe that the darkest ages contained many individuals, not only distinguished among their contemporaries, but positively eminent for abilities and knowledge. A p.r.o.neness to extol every monk of whose productions a few letters or a devotional treatise survives, every bishop of whom it is related that he composed homilies, runs through the laborious work of the Benedictines of St. Maur, the 'Literary History of France,' and, in a less degree, is observable even in Tiraboschi, and in most books of this cla.s.s. Bede, Alcuin, Hincmar, Raban, and a number of inferior names, become real giants of learning in their uncritical panegyrics.

But one might justly say, that ignorance is the smallest defect of the writers of these dark ages. Several of these were tolerably acquainted with books; but that wherein they are uniformly deficient is original argument or expression. Almost every one is a compiler of sc.r.a.ps from the fathers, or from such semi-cla.s.sical authors as Boethius, Ca.s.siodorus, or Martinus Capella. Indeed, I am not aware that there appeared more than two really considerable men in the republic of letters from the sixth to the middle of the eleventh century--John, surnamed Scotus, or Erigena, a native of Ireland, and Gerbert, who became pope by the name of Sylvester II.: the first endowed with a bold and acute metaphysical genius, the second excellent, for the time when he lived, in mathematical science and useful mechanical invention"

("Europe during the Middle Ages," Hallam, pp. 595-598).

If we look at the ministers of the Church, the old story of tyranny and vice is told over again during this century. Among its popes is numbered Benedict IX., deposed for his profligacy, restored and again deposed, restored by force of arms, and selling the pontificate, so that three popes at once claimed the tiara, and were all three declared unworthy, and a fourth placed on the throne. Fresh disturbances followed, and new usurpers, until in A.D. 1059 the election of the pope was taken out of the hands of the people and transferred to the college of cardinals, a change which was much struggled against, but which was ultimately adopted. In A.D. 1073 Hildebrand was elected pope under the t.i.tle of Gregory VII.; this man, perhaps, more than any other, augmented the temporal power of the papacy. It was he who moulded the church into the form of an absolute monarchy, and fought against all local privileges and national freedom of the churches in each land; it was he who claimed rule over all kings and princes, and treated them as va.s.sals of the Roman see; it was he who, in 1074, calling a council at Rome, caused it to decree the celibacy of the clergy, so that priests having no home, and no family ties, might feel their only home in the Church, and their only tie to Rome; it was he who struggled against Germany, and who kept the excommunicated emperor standing barefoot and almost naked in the snow for three days, in the courtyard of his castle. A bold bad man was this Hildebrand, but a man of genius and a master-mind, who conceived the mighty idea of a universal Church, wherein all princes should be va.s.sals, and the head of the Church absolute monarch of the world.

It was at the annual council of Rome, A.D. 1076, that Pope Gregory VII.

recited and proclaimed "all the ancient maxims, all the doubtful traditions, all the excessive pretensions, by which he could support his supremacy. It was, in a manner, the abridged code of his domination--the laws of servitude that he proposed to the world at large. Here are the terms of this charter of theocracy: 'The Roman Church is founded by G.o.d alone. The Roman pontiff alone can legitimately take the t.i.tle of universal ... There shall be no intercourse whatever held with persons excommunicated by the Pope, and none may dwell in the same house with them.... He alone may wear the imperial insignia. All the princes of the earth shall kiss the feet of the Pope, but of none other.... He has the right of deposing emperors.... The sentence of the Pope can be revoked by none, and he alone can revoke the sentences pa.s.sed by others. He can be judged by none. None may dare to p.r.o.nounce sentence on one who appeals to the See Apostolic. To it shall be referred all major causes by the whole Church. The Church of Rome never has erred, and never can err, as Scripture warrants. A Roman pontiff, canonically ordained, at once becomes, by the merit of Saint Peter, indubitably holy. By his order and with his permission it is lawful for subjects to accuse princes.... The Pope can loose subjects from the oath of fealty.' Such are the fundamental articles promulgated by Gregory VII. in the Council of Rome, which the official historian of the Church reproduced in the commencement of the seventeenth century as being authentic and legitimate, and Rome has never disavowed it. Borrowed in part from the false Decretals, resting, most of them, on the fabulous donation of Constantine, and on the successive impostures and usurpations of the first barbarous ages, they received from the hand of Gregory VII. a new character of force and unity. That pontiff stamped them with the sanction of his own genius. Such authority had never before been created: it made every other power useless and subaltern" ("Life of Gregory VII.," by Villemain, trans. by Brockley, vol. ii., pp. 53-55).

Thus the struggle became inevitable between the temporal and the spiritual powers. "In every country there was a dual government:--1.

That of a local kind, represented by a temporal sovereign. 2. That of a foreign kind, acknowledging the authority of the Pope. This Roman influence was, in the nature of things, superior to the local; it expressed the sovereign will of one man over all the nations of the continent conjointly, and gathered overwhelming power from its compactness and unity. The local influence was necessarily of a feeble nature, since it was commonly weakened by the rivalries of conterminous states and the dissensions dexterously provoked by its compet.i.tor. On not a single occasion could the various European states form a coalition against their common antagonist. Whenever a question arose, they were skilfully taken in detail, and commonly mastered. The ostensible object of papal intrusion was to secure for the different peoples, moral well-being; the real object was to obtain large revenues and give support to large bodies of ecclesiastics. The revenues thus abstracted were not unfrequently many times greater than those pa.s.sing into the treasury of the local power. Thus, on the occasion of Innocent IV.

demanding provision to be made for three hundred additional Italian clergy by the Church of England, and that one of his nephews, a mere boy, should have a stall in Lincoln Cathedral, it was found that the sum already annually abstracted by foreign ecclesiastics from England was thrice that which went into the coffers of the king. While thus the higher clergy secured every political appointment worth having, and abbots vied with counts in the herds of slaves they possessed--some, it is said, owned not fewer than twenty thousand--begging friars pervaded society in all directions, picking up a share of what still remained to the poor. There was a vast body of non-producers, living in idleness and owning a foreign allegiance, who were subsisting on the fruits of the toil of the labourers" ("Conflict between Religion and Science," Draper, pp. 266, 267).

The struggle between the Greek and Latin Churches, hushed for awhile, broke out again fiercely A.D. 1053, and in 1054 Rome excommunicated Constantinople, and Constantinople excommunicated Rome. The disputes as to transubstantiation continued, and shook the Roman Church with their violence. Outside orthodoxy, some of the old heresies lingered on. The Paulicians wandered throughout Europe, and became known in Italy as the Paterini and the Cathari, in France as the Albigenses, Bulgarians, or Publicans. The Council of Orleans condemned them to be burned alive, and many perished.

CENTURY XII.

The wars which spread Christianity were not yet entirely over, but we only hear of them now on the outskirts, so to speak, of Europe, except where some tribes apostatized now and then, and were brought back to the true faith by the sword. The struggles between the popes and the more stiff-necked princes as to their relative rights and privileges continued, and we sometimes see the curious spectacle of a pontiff on the side of the people, or rather of the barons, against the king: whenever this is so, we find that the king is struggling against Roman supremacy, and that the pope uses the power of the nation to subdue the rebellious monarch. We do not find Rome interfering to save the people from oppression when the oppressor is a faithful and obedient son of Holy Church.

Fresh heresies spread during this century, and we everywhere met with one corrective--death. Most of them appear to have grown out of the old Manichaean heresy, and taught much of the old asceticism. The Cathari were hunted down and put to death throughout Italy. Arnold of Brescia, who loudly protested against the possessions of the Church, and maintained that church revenues should be handed over to the State, proved himself so extremely distasteful to the clergy that they arrested him, crucified him and burned his dead body (A.D. 1155). Peter de Bruys, who objected to infant baptism, and may be called the ancestor of the Baptists, was burnt A.D. 1130. Many other reformers shared the same fate, and one large sect must here be noted. Peter Waldus, its founder, was a merchant of Lyons, who (A.D. 1160) employed a priest to translate the Gospels for him, together with other portions of the Bible. Studying these, he resolved to abandon his business and distribute his wealth among the poor, and, in A.D. 1180, he became a public preacher, and formed an a.s.sociation to teach the doctrines of the Gospel, as he conceived them, against the doctrines of the Church. The sect first a.s.sumed only the simple name of "the poor men of Lyons," but soon became known as the Waldenses, one of the most powerful and most widely spread sects of the Middle Ages. They were, in fact, the precursors of the Reformation, and are notable as heretics protesting against the authorty of Rome because that authority did not commend itself to their reason; thus they a.s.serted the right of private judgment, and for that a.s.sertion they deserve a niche in the great temple of heretic thought.

CENTURY XIII.

In the far west of Europe paganism still struggled against Christianity, and from A.D. 1230 to 1280 a long, fierce war was waged against the Prussians, to confirm them in the Christian faith; the Teutonic knights of St. Mary succeeded finally in their apostolic efforts, and at last "established Christianity and fixed their own dominion in Prussia" (p.

309), whence they made forays into the neighbouring countries, and "pillaged, burned, ma.s.sacred, and ruined all before them." In Spain, Christianity had a yet sadder triumph, for there the civilized Moors were falling under the brutal Christians, and the "garden of the world"

was being invaded by the hordes of the Roman Church. The end, however, had not yet come. In France, we see the erection of THE INQUISITION, the most hateful and fiendish tribunal ever set up by religion. The heretical sects were spreading rapidly in southern provinces of France, and Innocent III., about the commencement of this century, sent legates extraordinary into the southern provinces of France to do what the bishops had left undone, and to extirpate heresy, in all its various forms and modifications, without being at all scrupulous in using such methods as might be necessary to effect this salutary purpose. The persons charged with this ghostly commission were Rainier, a Cistercian monk, Pierre de Castelnau, archdeacon of Maguelonne, who became also afterwards a Cistercian friar. These eminent missionaries were followed by several others, among whom was the famous Spaniard, Dominic, founder of the order of preachers, who, returning from Rome in the year 1206, fell in with these delegates, embarked in their cause, and laboured both by his exhortations and actions in the extirpation of heresy. These spiritual champions, who engaged in this expedition upon the sole authority of the pope, without either asking the advice, or demanding the succours of the bishops, and who inflicted capital punishment upon such of the heretics as they could not convert by reason and argument, were distinguished in common discourse by the t.i.tle of _inquisitors_, and from them the formidable and odious tribunal called the _Inquisition_ derived its origin (pp. 343, 344). In A.D. 1229, a council of Toulouse "erected in every city a _council of inquisitors consisting of one priest and two laymen_" (Ibid). In A.D. 1233, Gregory IX. superseded this tribunal by appointing the Dominican monks as inquisitors, and the pope's legate in France thereupon went from city to city, wherever these monks had a monastery, and there appointed some of their number "inquisitors of heretical pravity." The princes of Europe were then persuaded to lend the aid of the State to the work of blood, and to commit to the flames those who were handed over as heretics to the civil power by the inquisitors. The plan of working was most methodical.

The rules of torture were carefully drawn out: the prisoner was stripped naked, the hair cut off, and the body then laid on the rack and bound down; the right, then the left, foot tightly bound and strained by cords; the right and left arm stretched; the fleshy part of the arm compressed with fine cords; all the cords tightened together by one turn; a second and third turn of the same kind: beyond this, with the rack, women were not to be tortured; with men a fourth turn was employed. These directions were written in a Manual, used by the Grand Inquisitor of Seville as late as A.D. 1820. An a.n.a.lysis is given by Dr.

Rule, in his "History of the Inquisition," Appendix to vol. i., pp.

339-359, ed. 1874. Then we hear, elsewhere, of torture by roasting the feet, by pulleys, by red-hot pincers--in short, by every abominable instrument of cruelty which men, inspired by religion, could conceive.

Let the student take Llorente and Dr. Rule alone, and he will learn enough of the Inquisition horrors to make him shudder at the sight of a cross--at the name of Christianity.

Llorente gives the most revolting details of the torture of Jean de Salas, at Valladolid, A.D. 1527, and this one case may serve as a specimen of Inquisition work during these bloodstained centuries.

Stripped to his s.h.i.+rt, he was placed on the _chevalet_ (a narrow frame, wherein the body was laid, with no support save a pole across the middle), and his feet were raised higher than his head; tightly twisted cords cut through his flesh, and were twisted yet tighter and tighter as the torture proceeded; fine linen, thrust into his mouth and throat, added to the unnatural position, made breathing well nigh impossible, and on the linen water slowly fell, drop by drop, from a suspended vessel over his head, till every struggling breath stained the cloth with blood (see "Histoire critique de l'Inquisition d'Espagne," t. II., pp. 20-23, ed. 1818). This Spanish Inquisition, during its existence, punished heretics as follows:--