Beacon Lights of History, Volume 3 part 1: The Middle Ages
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Title: Beacon Lights of History, Volume 3 part 1: The Middle Ages
Author: John Lord
Release date: October 1, 1998 [eBook #1498]
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Language: English
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The numbering of volumes in the earlier set reflected
the order in which the lectures were given. In the
later version, volumes were numbered to put the subjects
in historical sequence.
Beacon Lights of History
by John Lord, LL.D.
Volume III.
Part I--The Middle Ages.
CONTENTS.
MOHAMMED.
SARACENIC CONQUESTS.
Change of public opinion about Mohammed
Astonishing triumph of Mohammedanism
Old religious systems of Arabia
Polytheism succeeds the doctrines of the Magians
The necessity of reform
Early life of Mohammed
Cadijeh
Mohammed's meditations and dreams
His belief in a personal God
He preaches his new doctrines
The opposition and ridicule of his countrymen
The perseverance of Mohammed amid obstacles
His flight to Medina
The Koran and its doctrines
Change in Mohammed's mode of propagating his doctrines
Polygamy and a sensual paradise
Warlike means to convert Arabia
Mohammed accommodates his doctrines to the habits of his countrymen
Encourages martial fanaticism
Conquest of Arabia
Private life of Mohammed, after his success
Carlyle's apology for Mohammed
The conquest of Syria and Egypt
Conquest of Persia and India
Deductions in view of Saracenic conquests
Necessity of supernatural aid in the conversion of the world
Authorities.
CHARLEMAGNE.
REVIVAL OF WESTERN EMPIRE.
Ancestry and early life of Charlemagne
The Merovingian princes
Condition of Europe on the accession of Charlemagne
Necessity for such a hero to arise
His perils and struggles
Wars with the Saxons
The difficulties of the Saxon conquest
Forced conversion of the Saxons
The Norman pirates
Conquest of the Avares
Unsuccessful war with the Saracens
The Lombard wars
Coronation of Charlemagne at Rome
Imperialism and its influences
The dismemberment of Charlemagne's empire
Foundation of Feudalism
Charlemagne as a legislator
His alliance with the clergy
His administrative abilities
Reasons why he patronized the clergy
Results of Charlemagne's policy
Hallam's splendid eulogy
Authorities
HILDEBRAND.
THE PAPAL EMPIRE.
Wonderful government of the Papacy
Its vitality
Its contradictions
Its fascinations
The crimes of which it is accused
General character of the popes
Gregory VII. the most famous
His personal history
His autocratic ideas
His reign at the right time
Society in Europe in the eleventh century
Character of the clergy
The monks, and the need of reform
Character of the popes before Gregory VII.
Celibacy of the clergy
Alliance of the Papacy and Monasticism
Opposition to the reforms of Hildebrand
Terrible power of excommunication
Simony and its evils
Secularization of the clergy
Separation of spiritual from temporal power
Henry IV. of Germany
Approaching strife between Henry and Hildebrand
Their respective weapons
Henry summoned to Rome
Excommunication of Henry
Henry deserted and disarmed
Compelled to yield to Hildebrand
His great mistake
Renewed contest
Humiliation of the Pope
Moral effects of the contest
Speculations about the Papal power
Authorities
SAINT BERNARD.
MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS
Antiquity of Monastic life
Causes which led to it
Oriental asceticism
Religious contemplation
Insoluble questions
Self-expiations
Basil the founder of Monasticism
His interesting history
Gregory Nazianzen
Vows of the monks
Their antagonism to prevailing evils
Vow of Poverty opposed to money-making
That of Chastity a protest against prevailing impurity
Origin of celibacy
Its subsequent corruption
Necessity of the vow of Obedience
Benedict and the Monastery of Monte Casino
His rules generally adopted
Lofty and useful life of the early monks
Growth and wealth of Monastic institutions
Magnificence of Mediaeval convents
Privileges of the monks
Luxury of the Benedictines
Relaxation of discipline
Degeneracy of the monks
Compared with secular clergy
Benefits which Monasticism conferred
Learning of the monks
Their common life
Revival of Learning
Rise of Scholasticism
Saint Bernard
His early piety and great attainments.
His vast moral influence
His reforms and labors
Rise of Dominicans and Franciscans.
Zeal of the mendicant friars
General benefits of Monastic institutions
Authorities
SAINT ANSELM.
MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY.
Birth and early life of Anselm
The Abbey of Bee
Scholarly life of Anselm
Visits of Anselm to England
Compared with Becket
Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury
Privileges of the Archbishop
Unwillingness of Anselm to be elevated
Lanfranc succeeded by Anselm
Quarrel between Anselm and William Rufus
Despotic character of William
Disputed claims of Popes Urban and Clement
Council of Rockingham
Royal efforts to depose Anselm
Firmness and heroism of Anselm
Duplicity of the king
His intrigues with the Pope
Pretended reconciliation with Anselm
Appeals to Rome
Inordinate claims of the Pope
Allegiance of Anselm to the Pope
Anselm at Rome
Death of William and Accession of Henry I.
Royal encroachments
Henry quarrels with Anselm
Results of the quarrel
Anselm as a theologian
Theology of the Middle Ages
Monks become philosophers
Gotschalk and predestination
John Scotus Erigena
Revived spirit of inquiry
Services of Anselm to theology
He brings philosophy to support theology
Combats Nominalism
His philosophical deductions
His devout Christian spirit
Authorities
THOMAS AQUINAS.
THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY.
Peter Abelard
Gives a new impulse to philosophy
Rationalistic tendency of his teachings
The hatreds he created
Peter Lombard
His "Book of Sentences"
Introduction of the writings of Aristotle into Europe
University of Paris
Character of the students
Their various studies
Aristotle's logic used
The method of the Schoolmen
The Dominicans and Franciscans
Innocent III.
Thomas Aquinas
His early life and studies
Albertus Magnus
Aquinas's first great work
Made Doctor of Theology
His "Summa Theologica"
Its vast learning
Parallel between Aquinas and Plato
Parallel between Plato and Aristotle
Influence of Scholasticism
Waste of intellectual life
Scholasticism attractive to the Middle Ages
To be admired like a cathedral
Authorities
THOMAS BECKET.
PRELATICAL POWER.
Becket a puzzle to historians
His early history
His gradual elevation
Friendship with Henry II.
Becket made Chancellor
Elevated to the See of Canterbury
Dignity of an archbishop of Canterbury
Lanfranc
Anselm
Theobald
Becket in contrast
His ascetic habits as priest
His high-church principles
Upholds the spiritual courts
Defends the privileges of his order
Conflict with the king
Constitutions of Clarendon
Persecution of Becket
He yields at first to the king
His repentance
Defection of the bishops
Becket escapes to the Continent
Supported by Louis VII. of France
Insincerity of the Pope
Becket at Pontigny in exile
His indignant rebuke of the Pope
Who excommunicates the Archbishop of York
Henry obliged to compromise
Hollow reconciliation with Becket
Return of Becket to Canterbury
His triumphal procession
Annoyance of Henry
Assassination of Becket
Consequences of the murder
Authorities
THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.
Anarchies of the Merovingian period
Society on the dissolution of Charlemagne's empire
Allodial tenure
Origin of Feudalism
Dependence and protection the principles of Feudalism
Peasants and their masters
The sentiment of loyalty
Contentment of the peasantry
Evils that cannot be redressed
Submission to them a necessity
Division of Charlemagne's empire
Life of the nobles
Pleasures and habits of feudal barons
Aristocratic character of Feudalism
Slavery of the people
Indirect blessings of Feudalism
Slavery not an unmixed evil
Influence of chivalry
Devotion to woman
The lady of the baronial castle
Reasons why women were worshipped
Dignity of the baronial home
The Christian woman contrasted with the pagan
Glory and beauty of Chivalry
Authorities
THE CRUSADES.
The Crusades the great external event of the Middle Ages
A semi-religious and semi-military movement
What gives interest to wars?
Wars the exponents of prevailing ideas
The overruling of all wars
The majesty of Providence seen in war
Origin of the Crusades
Pilgrimages to Jerusalem
Miseries and insults of the pilgrims
Intense hatred of Mohammedanism
Peter of Amiens
Council of Clermont
The First Crusade
Its miseries and mistakes
The Second Crusade
The Third Crusade
The Fourth, Children's, Fifth, and Sixth Crusades
The Seventh Crusade
All alike unsuccessful, and wasteful of life and energies
Peculiarities and immense mistakes of the Crusaders
The moral evils of the Crusades
Ultimate results of the Crusades
Barrier made against Mohammedan conquests
Political necessity of the Crusades
Their effect in weakening the Feudal system
Effect of the Crusades on the growth of cities
On commerce and art and literature
They scatter the germs of a new civilization
They centralize power
They ultimately elevate the European races
Authorities
WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
Roman architecture
First form of a Christian church
The change to the Romanesque
Its peculiarities
Its connection with Monasticism
Gloomy aspect of the churches of the tenth and eleventh centuries
Effect of the Crusades on church architecture
Church architecture becomes cheerful
The Gothic churches of France and Germany
The English Mediaeval churches
Glories of the pointed arch
Effect of the Renaissance on architecture
Mongrel style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Revival of the pure gothic
Churches should be adapted to their uses
Incongruity of Protestantism with ritualistic architecture
Protestantism demands a church for preaching
Gothic vaults unfavorable to oratory
Authorities
JOHN WYCLIF.
DAWN OF THE REFORMATION.
Harmony of Protestant and Mediaeval creeds
The Reformation a moral movement
The evils of Papal institutions
The evils of monastic life
Quarrels and dissoluteness of monks
Birth of Wyclif
His scholastic attainments and honors
His political influence
The powers who have ruled the world
Wyclif sent on a mission to Bruges
Protection of John of Gaunt
Wyclif summoned to an ecclesiastical council
His defenders and foes
Triumph of Wyclif
He openly denounces the Pope
His translation of the Bible
Opposition to it by the higher clergy
Hostility of Roman Catholicism to the right of private judgment
Hostility to the Bible in vernacular tongues
Spread of the Bible in English
Wyclif as a doctrinal reformer
He attacks Transubstantiation
Deserted by the Duke of Lancaster
But dies peaceably in his parish
Wyclif contrasted with Luther
His great services to the church
Reasons why he escaped martyrdom
Authorities
MOHAMMED
A. D. 570-632.
SARACENIC CONQUESTS
The most extraordinary man who arose after the fall of the Roman
Empire was doubtless Mohammed;* and his posthumous influence has
been greater than that of any man since Christianity was declared,
if we take into account the number of those who have received his
doctrines. Even Christianity never had so rapid a spread. More
than a sixth part of the human race are the professed followers of
the Arabian prophet.
* Spelled also Mahomet, Mahommed; but I prefer Mohammed.
In regard to Mohammed himself, a great change has taken place in
the opinions of critics within fifty years. It was the fashion
half a century ago to speak of this man as a hypocrite, an
impostor, even as Antichrist. Now he is generally regarded as a
reformer; that is, as a man who introduced into Arabia a religion
and a morality superior to what previously existed, and he is
regarded as an impostor only so far as he was visionary. Few
critics doubt his sincerity. He was no hypocrite, since he himself
believed in his mission; and his mission was benevolent,--to turn
his countrymen from a gross polytheism to the worship of one God.
Although his religion cannot compare with Christianity in purity
and loftiness, yet it enforced a higher morality than the old
Arabian religions, and assimilated to Christianity in many
important respects. The chief fault we have to find in Mohammed
was, the propagation of his doctrines by the sword, and the use of
wicked means to bring about a good end. The truths he declared
have had an immense influence on Asiatic nations, and these have
given vitality to his system, if we accept the position that truth
alone has vitality.
One remarkable fact stands out for the world to ponder,--that, for
more than fourteen hundred years, one hundred and eighty millions
(more than a sixth part of the human race) have adopted and
cherished the religion of Mohammed; that Christianity never had so
astonishing a triumph; and that even the adherents of Christianity,
in many countries, have not manifested the zeal of the Mohammedans
in most of the countries where it has been acknowledged. Now these
startling facts can be explained only on the ground that
Mohammedanism has great vital religious and moral truths underlying
its system which appeal to the consciousness of mankind, or else
that these truths are so blended with dangerous errors which appeal
to depraved passions and interests, that the religion spread in
consequence of these errors rather than of the truth itself.
The question to be considered, then, is whether Mohammedanism
spread in consequence of its truths or in consequence of its
errors.
In order to appreciate the influence of the Arabian prophet, we are
first led into the inquiry whether his religion was really an
improvement on the old systems which previously prevailed in
Arabia. If it was, he must be regarded as a benefactor and
reformer, even if we admit the glaring evils of his system, when
measured by the purer religion of the Cross. And it then simply
becomes a question whether it is better to have a prevalent
corrupted system of religion containing many important truths, or a
system of downright paganism with few truths at all.
In examining the religious systems of Arabia in the age preceding
the advent of the Prophet, it would seem that the most prominent of
them were the old doctrines of the Magians and Sabaeans, blended
with a gross idolatry and a senseless polytheism. Whatever may
have been the faith of the ancient Sabaean sages, who noted the
aspects of the stars, and supposed they were inhabited by angels
placed there by Almighty power to supervise and govern the
universe, yet history seems to record that this ancient faith was
practically subverted, and that the stars, where were supposed to
dwell deities to whom prayers were made, became themselves objects
of worship, and even graven images were made in honor of them.
Among the Arabs each tribe worshipped a particular star, and set up
its particular idol, so that a degrading polytheism was the
religion of the land. The object of greatest veneration was the
celebrated Black Stone, at Mecca, fabled to have fallen from heaven
at the same time with Adam. Over this stone was built the Kaabah,
a small oblong stone building, around which has been since built
the great mosque. It was ornamented with three hundred and sixty
idols. The guardianship of this pagan temple was intrusted to the
most ancient and honorable families of Mecca, and to it resorted
innumerable pilgrims bringing precious offerings. It was like the
shrine of Delphi, as a source of profit to its fortunate guardians.
Thus before Mohammed appeared polytheism was the prevalent religion
of Arabia,--a degradation even from the ancient Sabaean faith. It
is true there were also other religions. There were many Jews at
Medina; and there was also a corrupted form of Christianity in many
places, split up into hostile and wrangling sects, with but little
of the spirit of the divine Founder, with innumerable errors and
superstitions, so that in no part of the world was Christianity so
feeble a light. But the great body of the people were pagans. A
marked reform was imperatively needed to restore the belief in the
unity of God and set up a higher standard of morality.
It is claimed that Mohammed brought such a reform. He was born in
the year 570, of the family of Hashem and the tribe of Koreish, to
whom was intrusted the keeping of the Black Stone. He therefore
belonged to the highest Arabian aristocracy. Early left an orphan
and in poverty, he was reared in the family of one of his uncles,
under all the influences of idolatry. This uncle was a merchant,
and the youth made long journeys with him to distant fairs,
especially in Syria, where he probably became acquainted with the
Holy Scriptures, especially with the Old Testament. In his twenty-
fifth year he entered the service of Cadijeh, a very wealthy widow,
who sent to the fairs and towns great caravans, which Mohammed
accompanied in some humble capacity,--according to the tradition as
camel-driver. But his personal beauty, which was remarkable, and
probably also his intelligence and spirit, won the heart of this
powerful mistress, and she became his wife.
He was now second to none in the capital of Arabia, and great
thoughts began to fill his soul. His wife perceived his greatness,
and, like Josephine and the wife of Disraeli, forwarded the
fortunes of her husband, for he became rich as well as intellectual
and noble, and thus had time and leisure to accomplish more easily
his work. From twenty-five to forty he led chiefly a contemplative
life, spending months together in a cave, absorbed in his grand
reflections,--at intervals issuing from his retreat, visiting the
marts of commerce, and gaining knowledge from learned men. It is
seldom that very great men lead either a life of perpetual
contemplation or of perpetual activity. Without occasional rest,
and leisure to mature knowledge, no man can arm himself with the
weapons of the gods. To be truly great, a man must blend a life of
activity with a life of study,--like Moses, who matured the
knowledge he had gained in Egypt amid the deserts of Midian.
With all great men some leading idea rules the ordinary life. The
idea which took possession of the mind of Mohammed was the
degrading polytheism of his countrymen, the multitude of their
idols, the grossness of their worship, and the degrading morals
which usually accompany a false theology. He set himself to work
to produce a reform, but amid overwhelming obstacles. He talked
with his uncles, and they laughed at him. They would not even
admit the necessity of a reform. Only Cadijeh listened to him and
encouraged him and believed in him. And Mohammed was ever grateful
for this mark of confidence, and cherished the memory of his wife
in his subsequent apostasy,--if it be true that he fell, like
Solomon. Long afterwards, when she was dead, Ayesha, his young and
favorite wife, thus addressed him: "Am I not better than Cadijeh?
Do you not love me better than you did her? She was a widow, old
and ugly." "No, by Allah!" replied the Prophet; "she believed in
me when no one else did. In the whole world I had but one friend,
and she was that friend." No woman ever retained the affections of
a husband superior to herself, unless she had the spirit of
Cadijeh,--unless she proved herself his friend, and believed in
him. How miserable the life of Jane Carlyle would have been had
she not been proud of her husband! One reason why there is
frequent unhappiness in married life is because there is no mutual
appreciation. How often have we seen a noble, lofty, earnest man
fettered and chained by a frivolous woman who could not be made to
see the dignity and importance of the labors which gave to her
husband all his real power! Not so with the woman who assisted
Mohammed. Without her sympathy and faith he probably would have
failed. He told her, and her alone, his dreams, his ecstasies, his
visions; how that God at different times had sent prophets and
teachers to reveal new truths, by whom religion had been restored;
how this one God, who created the heavens and the earth, had never
left Himself without witnesses of His truth in the most degenerate
times; how that the universal recognition of this sovereign Power
and Providence was necessary to the salvation of society. He had
learned much from the study of the Talmud and the Jewish
Scriptures; he had reflected deeply in his isolated cave; he knew
that there was but one supreme God, and that there could be no
elevated morality without the sense of personal responsibility to
Him; that without the fear of this one God there could be neither
wisdom nor virtue.
Hence his soul burned to tell his countrymen his earnest belief in a
supreme and personal God, to whom alone prayers should be made, and
who alone could rescue by His almighty power. He pondered day and
night on this single and simple truth. His perpetual meditations
and ascetic habits induced dreams and ecstasies, such as marked
primitive monks, and Loyala in his Manresan cave. He became a
visionary man, but most intensely earnest, for his convictions were
overwhelming. He fancied himself the ambassador of this God, as the
ancient Jewish prophets were; that he was even greater than they,
his mission being to remove idolatry,--to his mind the greatest evil
under the sun, since it was the root of all vices and follies.
Idolatry is either a defiance or a forgetfulness of God,--high
treason to the majesty of Heaven, entailing the direst calamities.
At last, one day, in his fortieth year, after he had been shut up a
whole month in solitude, so that his soul was filled with ecstasy
and enthusiasm, he declared to Cadijeh that the night before, while
wrapped in his mantle, absorbed in reverie, a form of divine
beauty, in a flood of light, appeared to him, and, in the name of
the Almighty who created the heavens and the earth, thus spake: "O,
Mohammed! of a truth thou art the Prophet of God, and I am his
angel Gabriel." "This," says Carlyle, "is the soul of Islam. This
is what Mohammed felt and now declared to be of infinite moment,
that idols and formulas were nothing; that the jargon of
argumentative Greek sects, the vague traditions of Jews, the stupid
routine of Arab idolatry were a mockery and a delusion; that there
is but one God; that we must let idols alone and look to Him. He
alone is reality; He made us and sustains us. Our whole strength
lies in submission to Him. The thing He sends us, be it death
even, is good, is the best. We resign ourselves to Him."
Such were the truths which Mohammed, with preternatural
earnestness, now declared,--doctrines which would revolutionize
Arabia. And why not? They are the same substantially which Moses
declared, to those sensual and degraded slaves whom he led out of
Egypt,--yea, the doctrines of David and of Job. "Though He slay
me, yet will I trust in Him." What a grand and all-important truth
it is to impress upon people sunk in forgetfulness and sensuality
and pleasure-seeking and idle schemes of vanity and ambition, that
there is a supreme Intelligence who overrules, and whose laws
cannot be violated with impunity; from whom no one can escape, even
though he "take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost
parts of the sea." This is the one truth that Moses sought to
plant in the minds of the Jews,--a truth always forgotten when
there is slavery to epicurean pleasures or a false philosophy.
Now I maintain that Mohammed, in seeking to impress his degenerate
countrymen with the idea of the one supreme God, amid a most
degrading and almost universal polytheism, was a great reformer.
In preaching this he was neither fanatic nor hypocrite; he was a
very great man, and thus far a good man. He does not make an
original revelation; he reproduces an old truth,--as old as the
patriarchs, as old as Job, as old as the primitive religions,--but
an exceedingly important one, lost sight of by his countrymen,
gradually lost sight of by all peoples when divine grace is
withheld; indeed practically by people in Christian lands in times
of great degeneracy. "The fool has said in his heart there is no
God;" or, Let there be no God, that we may eat and drink before we
die. Epicureanism, in its pleasures or in its speculations, is
virtually atheism. It was so in Greece. It is so with us.
Mohammed was now at the mature age of forty, in the fulness of his
powers, in the prime of his life; and he began to preach everywhere
that there is but one God. Few, however, believed in him. Why not
acknowledge such a fundamental truth, appealing to the intellect as
well as the moral sense? But to confess there is a supreme God,
who rewards and punishes, and to whom all are responsible both for
words and actions, is to imply a confession of sinfulness and the
justice of retribution. Those degraded Arabians would not receive
willingly such a truth as this, even as the Israelites ever sought
to banish it from their hearts and minds, in spite of their
deliverance from slavery. The uncles and friends of Mohammed
treated his mission with scorn and derision. Nor do I read that
the common people heard him gladly, as they listened to the
teachings of Christ. Zealously he labored for three years with all
classes; and yet in three years of exalted labor, with all his
eloquence and fervor and sincerity, he converted only about
thirteen persons, one of whom was his slave. Think of such a man
declaring such a truth, and only gaining thirteen followers in
three years! How sickened must have been his enthusiastic soul!
His worldly relatives urged him to silence. Why attack idols; why
quarrel with his own interests; why destroy his popularity? Then
exclaimed that great hero: "If the sun stood on my right hand, and
the moon on my left, ordering me to hold my peace, I would still
declare there is but one God,"--a speech rivalled only by Luther at
the Diet of Worms. Why urge a great man to be silent on the very
thing which makes him great? He cannot be silent. His truth--from
which he cannot be separated--is greater than life or death, or
principalities or powers.
Buffeted and ridiculed, still Mohammed persevered. He used at
first only moral means. He appealed only to the minds and hearts
of the people, encouraged by his few believers and sustained by the
fancied voice of that angel who appeared to him in his retreat.
But his earnest voice was drowned by discordant noises. He was
regarded as a lunatic, a demented man, because he professed to
believe in a personal God. The angry mob covered his clothes with
dust and ashes. They demanded miracles. But at this time he had
only truths to declare,--those saving truths which are perpetual
miracles. At last hostilities began. He was threatened and he was
persecuted. They laid plots to take his life. He sought shelter
in the castle of his uncle, Abu Taleh; but he died. Then
Mohammed's wife Cadijeh died. The priests of an idolatrous
religion became furious. He had laid his hands on their idols. He
was regarded as a disorganizer, an innovator, a most dangerous man.
His fortunes became darker and darker; he was hated, persecuted,
and alone.
Thus thirteen years passed away in reproach, in persecution, in
fear. At last forty picked men swore to assassinate him. Should
he remain at Mecca and die, before his mission was accomplished, or
should he fly? He concluded to fly to Medina, where there were
Jews, and some nominal converts to Christianity,--a new ground.
This was in the year 622, and the flight is called the Hegira,--
from which the East dates its era, in the fifty-third year of the
Prophet's life. In this city he was cordially welcomed, and he
soon found himself surrounded with enthusiastic followers. He
built a mosque, and openly performed the rites of the new religion.
At this era a new phase appears in the Prophet's life and
teachings. Thus far, until his flight, it would seem that he
propagated his doctrines by moral force alone, and that these
doctrines, in the main, were elevated. He had earnestly declared
his great idea of the unity of God. He had pronounced the worship
of images to be idolatrous. He held idolatry of all kinds in
supreme abhorrence. He enjoined charity, justice, and forbearance.
He denounced all falsehood and all deception, especially in trade.
He declared that humility, benevolence, and self-abnegation were
the greatest virtues. He commanded his disciples to return good
for evil, to restrain the passions, to bridle the tongue, to be
patient under injuries, to be submissive to God. He enjoined
prayer, fastings, and meditation as a means of grace. He laid down
the necessity of rest on the seventh day. He copied the precepts
of the Bible in many of their essential features, and recognized
its greatest teachers as inspired prophets.
It was during these thirteen years at Mecca, amid persecution and
ridicule, and with few outward successes, that he probably wrote
the Koran,--a book without beginning and without end, disjecta
membra, regardless of all rules of art, full of repetitions, and
yet full of lofty precepts and noble truths of morality evidently
borrowed from the Jewish Scriptures,--in which his great ideas
stand out with singular eloquence and impressiveness: the unity of
God, His divine sovereignty, the necessity of prayer, the soul's
immortality, future rewards and punishments. His own private life
had been blameless. It was plain and simple. For a whole month he
did not light a fire to cook his food. He swept his chamber
himself and mended his own clothes. His life was that of an
ascetic enthusiast, profoundly impressed with the greatness and
dignity of his mission. Thus far his greatest error and fault was
in the supposition that he was inspired in the same sense as the
ancient Jewish prophets were inspired,--to declare the will and the
truth of God. Any man leading such a life of contemplative
asceticism and retirement is prone to fall into the belief of
special divine illumination. It characterized George Fox, the
Anabaptists, Ignatius Loyola, Saint Theresa, and even, to some
extent, Oliver Cromwell himself. Mohammed's supreme error was that
he was the greatest as well as the last of the prophets. This was
fanaticism, but he was probably honest in the belief. His brain
was turned by dreams, ecstasies, and ascetic devotions. But with
all his visionary ideas of his call, his own morality and his
teachings had been lofty, and apparently unsuccessful. Possibly he
was discouraged with the small progress he had made,--disgusted,
irritated, fierce.
Certainly, soon after he was established at Medina, a great change
took place in his mode of propagating his doctrines. His great
ideas remained the same, but he adopted a new way to spread them.
So that I can almost fancy that some Mephistopheles, some form of
Satanic agency, some lying Voice whispered to him in this wise: "O
Mohammed! of a truth thou art the Prophet of the living God. Thou
hast declared the grandest truths ever uttered in Arabia; but see
how powerless they are on the minds and hearts of thy countrymen,
with all thy eloquence, sincerity, and fervor. By moral means thou
hast effected comparatively nothing. Thou hast preached thirteen
years, and only made a few converts. Thy truths are too elevated
for a corrupt and wicked generation to accept. Even thine own life
is in danger. Thou hast been obliged to fly to these barren rocks
and sands. Thou hast failed. Why not pursue a new course, and
adapt thy doctrines to men as they are? Thy countrymen are wild,
fierce, and warlike: why not incite their martial passions in
defence of thy doctrines? They are an earnest people, and,
believing in the truths which thou now declarest, they will fight
for them and establish them by the sword, not merely in Arabia, but
throughout the East. They are a pleasure-loving and imaginative
people: why not promise the victors of thy faith a sensual bliss in
Paradise? They will not be subverters of your grand truths; they
will simply extend them, and jealously, if they have a reward in
what their passions crave. In short, use the proper means for a
great end. The end justifies the means."
Whether influenced by such specious sophistries, or disheartened by
his former method, or corrupted in his own heart, as Solomon was,
by his numerous wives,--for Mohammed permitted polygamy and
practised it himself,--it is certain that he now was bent on
achieving more signal and rapid victories. He resolved to adapt
his religion to the depraved hearts of his followers. He would mix
up truth with error; he would make truth palatable; he would use
the means which secure success. It was success he wanted, and
success he thus far had not secured. He was ambitious; he would
become a mighty spiritual potentate.
So he allowed polygamy,--the vice of Eastern nations from remote
periods; he promised a sensual Paradise to those who should die in
defence of his religion; he inflamed the imagination of the
Arabians with visions of sensual joys. He painted heaven as a land
whose soil was the finest wheaten flour, whose air was fragrant
with perfumes, whose streams were of crystal water or milk or wine
or honey, flowing over beds of musk and camphor,--a glorious garden
of fruits and flowers, whose inhabitants were clothed in garments
of gold, sparkling with rubies and diamonds, who reclined in
sumptuous palaces and silken pavilions, and on couches of
voluptuous ease, and who were served with viands which could be
eaten without satiety, and liquors which could be drunk without
inebriation; yea, where the blissful warrior for the faith should
enjoy an unending youth, and where he would be attended by houris,
with black and loving eyes, free from all defects, resplendent in
beauty and grace, and rejoicing in perpetual charms.
Such were the views, it is maintained, with which he inflamed the
faithful. And, more, he encouraged them to take up arms, and
penetrate, as warlike missionaries, to the utmost bounds of the
habitable world, in order to convert men to the faith of the one
God, whose Prophet he claimed to be. Moreover, he made new and
extraordinary "revelations,"--that he had ascended into the seventh
heaven and held converse with Gabriel; and he now added to his
creed that old lie of Eastern theogonies, that base element of all
false religions,--that man can propitiate the Deity by works of
supererogation; that man can purchase by ascetic labors and
sacrifices his future salvation. This falsity enters largely into
Mohammedanism. I need not add how discrepant it is with the
cheerful teachings of the apostles, especially to the poor, as seen
in the deeds of penance, prayers in the corners of the streets, the
ablutions, the fasts, and the pilgrimages to which the faithful are
exhorted. And moreover he accommodated his fasts and feasts and
holidays and pilgrimages to the old customs of the people, thereby
teaching lessons of worldly wisdom. Astarte, the old object of
Sabaean idolatry, was particularly worshipped on a Friday; and this
day was made the Mohammedan Sabbath. Again, the month Rhamadan,
from time immemorial, had been set apart for fastings; this month
the Prophet adopted, declaring that in it he had received his first
revelations. Pilgrimages to the Black Stone were favorite forms of
penance; and this was perpetuated in the pilgrimages to Mecca.
Thus it would appear that Mohammed, after his flight, accommodated
his doctrines to the customs and tastes of his countrymen,--
blending with the sublime truths he declared subtile and pernicious
errors. The early missionaries did the same thing in China and
Japan, thinking more of the number of their converts than of the
truth itself. Expediency--the utterly fallacious principle of the
end justifying the means--is seen in almost everything in this
world which blazes with success. It is seen in politics, in
philanthropy, in ecclesiasticism, and in education. So the earlier
missionaries, disregarding their vows, made the cause to which they
were consecrated subservient to their personal gain. What do you
think of a man, wearing the livery of a gospel minister, devoting
all his energies to money-making, versed in the ways of the
"heathen Chinee,"--"ways that are dark, and tricks that are vain,"--
all to succeed better in worldly thrift, using all means for that
single end,--is he not a traitor to his God, his Church, and his
fellowmen? "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the
throne." What would you think of a college which lowered the
standard of education in order to draw students, or selected, as
the guardians of its higher interests, those men who would
contribute the most money to its funds?
This spirit of expediency Mohammed entertained and utilized, in
order to gain success. Most of what is false in Mohammedanism is
based on expediency. The end was not lost sight of,--the
conversion of his countrymen to the belief in the unity and
sovereignty of God, but it was sought by means which would make
them fanatics or pharisees. He was not such a miserable creature
as one who seeks to make money by trading on the religious capital
of the community; but he did adapt his religion to the passions and
habits of the people in order that they might more readily be led
to accept it. He listened to that same wicked Voice which
afterwards appeared in the guise of an angel of light to mediaeval
ritualists. And it is thus that Satan has contrived to pervert the
best institutions of the world. The moment good men look to
outward and superficial triumphs, to the disregard of inward
purity, that moment do they accept the seductive lie of all ages,--
"The end justifies the means."
But the worst thing which the Prophet did in order to gain his end
was to make use of the sword. For thirteen years he appealed to
conscience. Now he makes it an inducement for men to fight for his
great idea. "Different prophets," said he, in his memorable
manifesto, "have been sent by God to illustrate His different
attributes: Moses, His providence; Solomon, His wisdom; Christ, His
righteousness; but I, the last of the prophets, am sent with the
sword. Let those who promulgate my faith enter into no arguments
or discussions, but slay all who refuse obedience. Whoever fights
for the true faith, whether he fall or conquer, will assuredly
receive a glorious reward, for the sword is the key of heaven. All
who draw it in defence of the faith shall receive temporal and
future blessings. Every drop of their blood, every peril and
hardship, will be registered on high as more meritorious than
fasting or prayer. If they fall in battle their sins will be
washed away, and they shall be transported into Paradise, to revel
in eternal pleasures, and in the arms of black-eyed houris." Thus
did he stimulate the martial fanaticism of a warlike and heroic
people with the promise of future happiness. What a monstrous
expediency,--worse than all the combined usurpations of the popes!
And what was the result? I need not point to the successive
conquests of the Saracens with such a mighty stimulus. They were
loyal to the truth for which they fought. They never afterwards
became idolaters; but their religion was built up on the miseries
of nations. To propagate the faith of Mohammed they overran the
world. Never were conquests more rapid and more terrible.
At first Mohammed's followers in Medina sallied out and attacked
the caravans of Arabia, and especially all belonging to Mecca (the
city which had rejected him), until all the various tribes
acknowledged the religion of the Prophet, for they were easily
converted to a faith which flattered their predatory inclinations
and promised them future immunities. The first cavalcade which
entered Medina with spoils made Mussulmans of all the inhabitants,
and gave Mohammed the control of the city. The battle of Moat gave
him a triumphal entrance into Mecca. He soon found himself the
sovereign of all Arabia; and when he died, at the age of 63, in the
eleventh year after his Hegira, or flight from Mecca, he was the
most successful founder of a religion the world has known, next to
Buddha. A religion appealing to truth alone had made only a few
converts in thirteen years; a religion which appealed to the sword
had made converts of a great nation in eleven years.
It is difficult to ascertain what the private life of the Prophet
was in these years of dazzling success. The authorities differ.
Some represent him as sunk in a miserable sensuality which
shortened his days. But I think this statement may be doubted. He
never lost the veneration of his countrymen,--and no veneration can
last for a man steeped in sensuality. Even Solomon lost his
prestige and popularity when he became vain and sensual. Those who
were nearest to the Prophet reverenced him most profoundly. With
his wife Ayesha he lived with great frugality. He was kindly, firm
in friendship, faithful and tender in his family, ready to forgive
enemies, just in decision. The caliphs who succeeded him, for some
time, were men of great simplicity, and sought to imitate his
virtues. He was doubtless warlike and fanatical, but conquests
such as he and his successors made are incompatible with luxury and
effeminacy. He stands arraigned at the bar of eternal justice for
perverting truth, for blending it with error, for making use of
wicked means to accomplish what he deemed a great end.
I have no patience with Mr. Carlyle, great and venerable as is his
authority, for seeming to justify Mohammed in assuming the sword.
"I care little for the sword," says this sophistical writer. "I
will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any
sword or tongue or implement it has or can lay hold on. What is
better than itself it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In
this great life-duel Nature herself is umpire, and can do no
wrong." That is, might makes right; only evil perishes in the
conflict of principles; whatever prevails is just. In other words,
if Mohammedanism, by any means it may choose to use, proves itself
more formidable than other religions, then it ought to prevail.
Suppose that the victories of the Saracens had extended over
Europe, as well as Asia and Africa,--had not been arrested by
Charles Martel,--would Carlyle then have preferred Mohammedanism to
the Christianity of degenerate nations? Was Mohammedanism a better
religion than the Christianity which existed in Asia Minor and in
various parts of the Greek empire in the sixth and seventh
centuries? Was it a good thing to convert the church of Saint
Sophia into a Saracenic mosque, and the city of the later Christian
emperors into the capital of the Turks? Is a united Saracenic
empire better than a divided, wrangling Christian empire?
But I will not enter upon that discussion. I confine myself to
facts. It is certain that Mohammedanism, by means of the sword,
spread with marvellous and unprecedented rapidity. The successors
of the Prophet carried their conquests even to India. Neither the
Syrians nor the Egyptians could cope with men who felt that the
sacrifice of life in battle would secure an eternity of bliss. The
armies of the Greek emperor melted away before the generals of the
caliph. The Cross waned before the Crescent. The banners of the
Moslems floated over the proudest battlements of ancient Roman
grandeur.
In the fifth year of the caliph Omar, only seventeen years from the
Prophet's flight from Mecca, the conquest of Syria was completed.
The Christians were forbidden to build churches, or speak openly of
their religion, or sit in the presence of a Mohammedan, or to sell
wine, or bear arms, or use the saddle in riding, or have a domestic
who had been in the Mohammedan service. The utter prostration of
all civil and religious liberty took place in the old scenes of
Christian triumph. This was an instance in which persecution
proved successful; and because it was successful it is a proof, in
the eyes of Carlyle, that the persecuting religion was the better,
because it was outwardly the stronger.
The conquest of Egypt rapidly followed that of Syria; and with the
fall of Alexandria perished the largest library of the world, the
thesaurus of all the intellectual treasures of antiquity.
Then followed the conquest of Persia. A single battle, as in the
time of Alexander, decided its fate. The marvel is that the people
should have changed their religion; but then, it was Mohammedanism
or death. And a still greater marvel it is,--an utter mystery to
me,--why that Oriental country should have continued faithful to
the new religion. It must have had some elements of vitality
almost worth fighting for, and which we do not comprehend.
Nor did Saracenic conquests end until the Arabs of the desert had
penetrated southward into India farther than had Alexander the
Great, and westward until they had subdued the northern kingdoms of
Africa, and carried their arms to the Pillars of Hercules; yea, to
the cities of the Goths in Spain, and were only finally arrested in
Europe by the heroism of Charles Martel.
Such were the rapid conquests of the Saracens--and permanent
conquests also--in Asia and Africa, under the stimulus of religious
fanaticism, until they had reduced thirty-six thousand cities,
towns, and castles, and built fourteen thousand mosques.
Now what are the deductions to be logically drawn from these
stupendous victories and the consolidation of the various religions
of the conquered into the creed of Mohammed,--not repudiated when
the pressure was removed, but apparently cherished by one hundred
and eighty millions of people for more than a thousand years?
We must take the ground that the religion of Mohammed has
marvellous and powerful truths, which we have overlooked and do not
understand, which appeal to the heart and conscience, and excite a
great enthusiasm,--so great as to stimulate successive generations
with an almost unexampled ardor, and to defend which they were
ready to die; a religion which has bound diverse nations together
for nearly fourteen hundred years. If so, it cannot be abused, or
ridiculed, or sneered at, any more than can the dominion of the
popes in the Middle Ages, but remains august in impressive mystery
to us, and even to future ages.
But if, in comparison with Christianity, it is a corrupt and false
religion, as many assume, then what deductions must we draw from
its amazing triumphs? For the fact stares us in the face that it
is rooted deeply in a large part of the Eastern world, or, at
least, has prevailed victorious for more than a thousand years.
First, we must conclude that the external triumph of a religion,
especially among ignorant or wicked people, is not so much owing to
the purity and loftiness of its truths, as to its harmony with
prevailing errors and corruptions. When Mohammed preached his
sublimest doctrines, and appealed to reason and conscience, he
converted about a score of people in thirteen years. When he
invoked demoralizing passions, he converted all Arabia in eleven
years. And does not this startling conclusion seem to be confirmed
by the whole history of mankind? How slow the progress of
Christianity for two hundred years, except when assisted by direct
supernatural influences! How rapid its triumphs when it became
adapted to the rude barbaric mind, or to the degenerate people of
the Empire! How popular and prevalent and widespread are those
religions which we are accustomed to regard as most corrupt!
Buddhism and Brahmanism have had more adherents than even
Mohammedanism. How difficult it was for Moses and the prophets to
keep the Jews from idolatry! What caused the rapid eclipse of
faith in the antediluvian world? Why could not Noah establish and
perpetuate his doctrines among his own descendants before he was
dead? Why was the Socratic philosophy unpopular? Why were the
Epicureans so fashionable? Why was Christianity itself most
eagerly embraced when its light was obscured by fables and
superstitions? Why did the Roman Empire perish, with all the aid
of a magnificent civilization; why did this civilization itself
retrograde; why did its art and literature decline? Why did the
grand triumphs of Protestantism stop in half a century after Luther
delivered his message? What made the mediaeval popes so powerful?
What gave such ascendency to the Jesuits? Why is the simple faith
of the primitive Christians so obnoxious to the wise, the mighty,
and the noble? What makes the most insidious heresies so
acceptable to the learned? Why is modern literature, when
fashionable and popular, so antichristian in its tone and spirit?
Why have not the doctrines of Luther held their own in Germany, and
those of Calvin in Geneva, and those of Cranmer in England, and
those of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England? Is it because, as men
become advanced in learning and culture, they are theologically
wiser than Moses and Abraham and Isaiah?
I do not cite the rapid decline of modern civilized society, in a
political or social view, in the most favored sections of
Christendom; I do not sing dirges over republican institutions; I
would not croak Jeremiads over the changes and developments of
mankind. I simply speak of the marvellous similarity which the
spread and triumph of Mohammedanism seem to bear to the spread and
triumph of what is corrupt and wicked in all institutions and
religions since the fall of man. Everywhere it is the frivolous,
the corrupt, the false, which seem to be most prevalent and most
popular. Do men love truth, or readily accept it, when it
conflicts with passions and interests? Is any truth popular which
is arrayed against the pride of reason? When has pure moral truth
ever been fashionable? When have its advocates not been reviled,
slandered, misrepresented, and persecuted, if it has interfered
with the domination of prevailing interests? The lower the scale
of pleasures the more eagerly are they sought by the great mass of
the people, even in Christian communities. You can best make
colleges thrive by turning them into schools of technology, with a
view of advancing utilitarian and material interests. You cannot
make a newspaper flourish unless you fill it with pictures and
scandals, or make it a vehicle of advertisements,--which are not
frivolous or corrupt, it is true, but which have to do with merely
material interests. Your libraries would never be visited, if you
took away their trash. Your Sabbath-school books would not be
read, unless you made them an insult to the human understanding.
Your salons would be deserted, if you entertained your guests with
instructive conversation. There would be no fashionable
gatherings, if it were not to display dresses and diamonds. Your
pulpits would be unoccupied, if you sought the profoundest men to
fill them.
Everything, even in Christian communities, shows that vanities and
follies and falsehoods are the most sought, and that nothing is
more discouraging than appeals to high intelligence or virtue, even
in art. This is the uniform history of the race, everywhere and in
all ages. Is it darkness or light which the world loves? I never
read, and I never heard, of a great man with a great message to
deliver, who would not have sunk under disappointment or chagrin
but for his faith. Everywhere do you see the fascination of error,
so that it almost seems to be as vital as truth itself. When and
where have not lies and sophistries and hypocrisies reigned? I
appeal to history. I appeal to the observation and experience of
every thoughtful and candid mind. You cannot get around this
truth. It blazes and it burns like the fires of Sinai. Men left
to themselves will more and more retrograde in virtue.
What, then, is the hope of the world? We are driven to this
deduction,--that if truth in itself is not all-conquering, the
divine assistance, given at times to truth itself, as in the early
Church, is the only reason why truth conquers. This divine grace,
promised in the Bible, has wrought wonders whenever it has pleased
the Almighty to bestow it, and only then. History teaches this as
impressively as revelation. Christianity itself, unaided, would
probably die out in this world. And hence the grand conclusion is,
that it is the mysterious, or, as some call it, the super-natural,
spirit of Almighty power which is, after all, the highest hope of
this world. This is not discrepant with the oldest traditions and
theogonies of the East,--the hidden wisdom of ancient Indian and
Persian and Egyptian sages, concealed from the vulgar, but really
embraced by the profoundest men, before corruptions perverted even
their wisdom. This certainly is the earliest revelation of the
Bible. This is the power which Moses recognized, and all the
prophets who succeeded him. This is the power which even Mohammed,
in the loftiness of his contemplations, more dimly saw, and
imperfectly taught to the idolaters around him, and which gives to
his system all that was really valuable. Ask not when and where
this power shall be most truly felt. It is around us, and above
us, and beneath us. It is the mystery and grandeur of the ages.
"It is not by might nor by power, but by my spirit," saith the
Lord; Man is nothing, his aspirations are nothing, the universe
itself is nothing, without the living, permeating force which comes
from this supernal Deity we adore, to interfere and save. Without
His special agency, giving to His truths vitality, this world would
soon become a hopeless and perpetual pandemonium. Take away the
necessity of this divine assistance as the one great condition of
all progress, as well as the highest boon which mortals seek,--then
prayer itself, recognized even by Mohammedans as the loftiest
aspiration and expression of a dependent soul, and regarded by
prophets and apostles and martyrs as their noblest privilege,
becomes a superstition, a puerility, a mockery, and a hopeless
dream.
AUTHORITIES.
The Koran; Dean Prideaux's Life of Mohammed; Vie de Mahomet, by the
Comte de Boulainvilliers; Gagnier's Life of Mohammed; Ockley's
History of the Saracens; Gibbon, fiftieth chapter; Hallam's Middle
Ages; Milman's Latin Christianity; Dr. Weil's Mohammed der
Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre; Renan, Revue des Deux Mondes,
1851; Bustner's Pilgrimage to El Medina and Mecca; Life of
Mahomet, by Washington Irving; Essai sur l'Histoire des Arabes, par
A. P. Caussin de Perceval; Carlyle's Lectures on Heroes and Hero
Worship; E. A. Freeman's Lectures on the History of the Sararens;
Forster's Mahometanism Unveiled; Maurice on the Religions of the
World; Life and Religion of Mohammed., translated from the Persian,
by Rev. I. L. Merrick.
CHARLEMAGNE.
A. D. 742-814.
REVIVAL OF WESTERN EMPIRE.
The most illustrious monarch of the Middle Ages was doubtless
Charlemagne. Certainly he was the first great statesman, hero, and
organizer that looms up to view after the dissolution of the Roman
Empire. Therefore I present him as one with whom is associated an
epoch in civilization. To him we date the first memorable step
which Europe took out of the anarchies of the Merovingian age. His
dream was to revive the Empire that had fallen, he was the first to
labor, with giant strength, to restore what vice and violence had
destroyed. He did not succeed in realizing the great ends to which
he aspired, but his aspirations were lofty. It was not in the
power of any man to civilize semi-barbarians in a single reign; but
if he attempted impossibilities he did not live in vain, since he
bequeathed some permanent conquests and some great traditions. He
left a great legacy to civilization. His life has not dramatic
interest like that of Hildebrand, nor poetic interest like the
lives of the leaders of the Crusades; but it is very instructive.
He was the pride of his own generation, and the boast of succeeding
ages, "claimed," says Sismondi, "by the Church as a saint, by the
French as the greatest of their kings, by the Germans as their
countryman, and by the Italians as their emperor."
His remote ancestors, it is said, were ecclesiastical magnates.
His grandfather was Charles Martel, who gained such signal
victories over the Mohammedan Saracens; his father was Pepin, who
was a renowned conqueror, and who subdued the southern part of
France, or Gaul. He did not rise, like Clovis, from the condition
of a chieftain of a tribe of barbarians; nor, like the founder of
his family, from a mayor of the palace, or minister of the
Merovingian kings. His early life was spent amid the turmoils and
dangers of camps, and as a young man he was distinguished for
precocity of talent, manly beauty, and gigantic physical strength.
He was a type of chivalry, before chivalry arose. He was born to
greatness, and early succeeded to a great inheritance. At the age
of twenty-six, in the year 768, he became the monarch of the
greater part of modern France, and of those provinces which border
on the Rhine. By unwearied activities this inheritance, greater
than that of any of the Merovingian kings, was not only kept
together and preserved, but was increased by successive conquests,
until no so great an empire has ever been ruled by any one man in
Europe, since the fall of the Roman Empire, from his day to ours.
Yet greater than the conquests of Charlemagne was the greatness of
his character. He preserved simplicity and gentleness amid all the
distractions attending his government.
His reign affords a striking contrast to that of all his
predecessors of the Merovingian dynasty,--which reigned from the
immediate destruction of the Roman Empire. The Merovingian
princes, with the exception of Clovis and a few others, were mere
barbarians, although converted to a nominal Christianity. Some of
them were monsters, and others were idiots. Clotaire burned to
death his own son and wife and daughters. Fredegunde armed her
assassins with poisoned daggers. "Thirteen sovereigns reigned over
the Franks in one hundred and fourteen years, only two of whom
attained to man's estate, and not one to the full development of
intellectual powers. There was scarcely one who did not live in a
state of perpetual intoxication, or who did not rival Sardanapalus
in effeminacy, and Commodus in cruelty." As these sovereigns were
good churchmen, their iniquities were glossed over by Gregory of
Tours. In HIS annals they may pass for saints, but history
consigns them to an infamous immortality.
It is difficult to conceive a more dreary and dismal state of
society than existed in France, and in fact over all Europe, when
Charlemagne began to reign. The Roman Empire was in ruins, except
in the East, where the Greek emperors reigned at Constantinople.
The western provinces were ruled by independent barbaric kings.
There was no central authority, although there was an attempt of
the popes to revive it,--a spiritual rather than a temporal power;
a theocracy whose foundation was secured by Leo the Great when he
established the jus divinum principle,--that he was the successor
of Peter, to whom were given the keys of heaven and hell. If there
was an interesting feature in the times it was this spiritual
authority exercised by the bishops of Rome: the most useful and
beneficent considering the evils which prevailed,--the reign of
brute force. The barbaric chieftains yielded a partial homage to
this spiritual power, and it was some check on their rapacity of
violence. It is mournful to think that so little of the ancient
civilization remained in the eighth century. Its eclipse was
total. The shadows of a dark and long night of superstition and
ignorance spread over Europe. Law was silenced by the sword.
Justinian's glorious legacy was already forgotten. The old
mechanism which had kept society together in the fifth century was
worn out, broken, rejected. There was no literature, no
philosophy, no poetry, no history, and no art. Even the clergy had
become ignorant, superstitious, and idle. Forms had taken the
place of faith. No great theologians had arisen since Saint
Augustine. The piety of the age hid itself in monasteries; and
these monasteries were as funereal as society itself. Men
despaired of the world, and retreated from it to sing mournful
songs. The architecture of the age expressed the sentiments of the
age, and was heavy, gloomy, and monotonous. "The barbarians
ruthlessly marched over the ruins of cities and palaces, having no
regard for the treasures of the classic world, and unmoved by the
lessons of its past experience." Rome itself, repeatedly sacked,
was a heap of ruins. No reconstruction had taken place. Gardens
and villas were as desolate as the ruined palaces, which were the
abodes of owls and spiders. The immortal creations of the chisel
were used to prop up old crumbling walls. The costly monuments of
senatorial pride were broken to pieces in sport or in caprice, and
those structures which had excited the admiration of ages were
pulled down that their material might be used in erecting tasteless
edifices. Literature shared the general desolation. The valued
manuscripts of classical ages were mutilated, erased, or burned.
Ignorance finished the destruction which the barbarians began.
Ignorance as well as anarchy veiled Europe in darkness. The rust
of barbarism became harder and thicker. The last hope of man had
fled, and glory was succeeded by shame. Even slavery, the curse of
the Roman Empire, was continued by the barbarians; only, brute
force was not made subservient to intellect, but intellect to brute
force. The descendants of ancient patrician families were in
bondage to barbarians. The age was the jubilee of monsters.
Assassination was common, and was unavenged by law. Every man was
his own avenger of crime, and his bloody weapons were his only law.
Nor were there seen among the barbaric chieftains the virtues of
ancient Pagan Rome and Greece, for Christianity was nominal. War
was universal; for the barbarians, having no longer the Romans to
fight, fought among themselves. There were incessant irruptions of
different tribes passing from one country to another, in search of
plunder and pillage. There was no security of life or property,
and therefore no ambition for acquisition. Men hid themselves in
morasses, in forests, on the tops of inaccessible hills, and amid
the recesses of valleys, for violence was the rule and not the
exception. Even feudalism was not then born, and still less
chivalry. We find no elevated sentiments. The only refuge for the
miserable was in the Church, and it was governed by men who shrank
from the world. A cry of despair went up to heaven among the
descendants of the old population. There was no commerce, no
travel, no industries, no money, no peace. The chastisement of
Almighty Power seems to have been sent on the old races and the new
alike. It was a desolation greater than that predicted by Jeremy
the prophet. The very end of the world seemed to be at hand.
Never in the old seats of civilization was there such a
disintegration; never such a combination of evils and miseries.
And there appeared to be no remedy: nothing but a long night of
horrors and sufferings could be predicted. Gaul, or France, was
the scene of turbulence, invasions, and anarchies; of murders, of
conflagrations, and of pillage by rival chieftains, who sought to
divide its territories among themselves. The people were utterly
trodden down. England was the battlefield of Danes, Saxons, and
Celts, invaded perpetually, and split up into petty Saxon kingdoms.
The roads were infested with robbers, and agriculture was rude.
The people lived in cabins, dressed themselves in skins, and fed on
the coarsest food. Spain was invaded by Saracens, and the Gothic
kingdoms succumbed to these fierce invaders. Italy was portioned
out among different tribes, Gothic and Slavonic. But the
prevailing races in Europe were Germanic (who had conquered both
the Celts and the Romans), the Goths in Spain, the Franks and
Burgundians in France, the Lombards in Italy, the Saxons in
England.
What a commentary on the imperial government of the Caesars!--that
government which, with all its mechanisms and traditions, lasted
scarcely four hundred years. Was there ever, in the whole history
of the world, so sudden and mournful a change from civilization to
barbarism,--and this in spite of art, science, law, and
Christianity itself? Were there no conservative forces in that
imposing Empire? Why did society constantly decline for four
hundred years, with that civilization which was its boast and hope?
Oh, ye optimists, who talk so glibly about the natural and
necessary progress of humanity, why was the Roman Empire swept
away, with all its material glories, to give place to such a state
of society as I have just briefly described?
And yet men should arise in due time, after the punishment of five
centuries of crime and violence, wretchedness and despair, to
reconstruct, not from the old Pagan materials of Greece and Rome,
but with the fresh energies of new races, aided and inspired by the
truths of the everlasting gospel. The infancy of the new races,
sprung however from the same old Aryan stock, passed into vigorous
youth when Charlemagne appeared. From him we date the first
decided impulse given to the Gothic civilization. He was the
morning star of European hopes and aspirations.
Let us now turn to his glorious deeds. What were the services he
rendered to Europe and Christian civilization?
It was necessary that a truly great man should arise in the eighth
century, if the new forces of civilization were to be organized.
To show what he did for the new races, and how he did it, is the
historian's duty and task in describing the reign of Charlemagne,--
sent, I think, as Moses was, for a providential mission, in the
fulness of time, after the slaveries of three hundred years, which
prepared the people for labor and industry. Better was it that
they should till the lands of allodial proprietors in misery and
sorrow, attacked and pillaged, than to wander like savages in
forests and morasses in quest of a precarious support, or in great
predatory hands, as they did in the fourth and fifth centuries,
when they ravaged the provinces of the falling Empire. Nothing was
wanted but their consolidation under central rule in order to repel
aggressors. And that is what Charlemagne attempted to do.
He soon perceived the greatness of the struggle to which he was
destined, and he did not flinch from the contest which has given
him immortality. He comprehended the difficulties which surrounded
him and the dangers which menaced him.
The great perils which threatened Europe were from unsubdued
barbarians, who sought to replunge it into the miseries which the
great irruptions had inflicted three hundred years before. He
therefore bent all the energies of his mind and all the resources
of his kingdom to arrest these fresh waves of inundation. And so
long was his contest with Saxons, Avares, Lombards, and other
tribes and races that he is chiefly to be contemplated as a man who
struggled against barbarism. And he fought them, not for
excitement, not for the love of fighting, not for useless
conquests, not for military fame, not for aggrandizement, but
because a stern necessity was laid upon him to protect his own
territories and the institutions he wished to conserve.
Of these barbarians there was one nation peculiarly warlike and
ferocious, and which cherished an inextinguishable hatred not
merely of the Franks, but of civilization itself. They were
obstinately attached to their old superstitions, and had a great
repugnance to Christianity. They were barbarians, like the old
North American Indians, because they determined to be so; because
they loved their forests and the chase, indulged in amusements
which were uncertain and dangerous, and sought for nothing beyond
their immediate inclinations. They had no territorial divisions,
and abhorred cities as prisons of despotism. But, like all the
Germanic barbarians, they had interesting traits. They respected
women; they were brave and daring; they had a dogged perseverance,
and a noble passion for personal independence. But they were
nevertheless the enemies of civilization, of a regular and
industrious life, and sought plunder and revenge. The Franks and
Goths were once like them, before the time of Clovis; but they had
made settlements, they tilled the land, and built villages and
cities: they were partially civilized, and were converted to
Christianity. But these new barbarians could not be won by arts or
the ministers of religion. These people were the Saxons, and
inhabited those parts of Germany which were bounded by the Rhine,
the Oder, the North Sea, and the Thuringian forests. They were
fond of the sea, and of daring expeditions for plunder. They were
a kindred race to those Saxons who had conquered England, and had
the same elements of character. They were poor, and sought to live
by piracy and robbery. They were very dangerous enemies, but if
brought under subjection to law, and converted to Christianity,
might be turned into useful allies, for they had the materials of a
noble race.
With such a people on his borders, and every day becoming more
formidable, what was Charlemagne's policy? What was he to do? The
only thing to the eye of that enlightened statesman was to conquer
them, if possible, and add their territories to the Frankish
Empire. If left to themselves, they might have conquered the
Franks. It was either anvil or hammer. There could be no lasting
peace in Europe while these barbarians were left to pursue their
depredations. A vigorous warfare was imperative, for, unless
subdued, a disadvantageous war would be carried on near the
frontiers, until some warrior would arise among them, unite the
various chieftains, and lead his followers to successful invasion.
Charlemagne knew that the difficult and unpleasant work of
subjugation must be done by somebody, and he was unwilling to leave
the work to enervated successors. The work was not child's play.
It took him the best part of his life to accomplish it, and amid
great discouragements. Of his fifty-three expeditions, eighteen
were against the Saxons. As soon as he had cut off one head of the
monster, another head appeared. How allegorical of human labor is
that old fable of the Hydra! Where do man's labors cease?
Charlemagne fought not only amid great difficulties, but perpetual
irritations. The Saxons cheated him; they broke their promises and
their oaths. When beaten, they sued for peace; but the moment his
back was turned, they broke out in new insurrections. The fame of
Caesar chiefly rests on his eight campaigns in Gaul. But Caesar
had the disciplined Legions of Rome to fight with. Charlemagne had
no such disciplined troops. Yet he had as many difficulties to
surmount as Caesar,--rugged forests to penetrate, rapid rivers to
cross, morasses to avoid, and mountains to climb. It is a very
difficult thing to subdue even savages who are desperate,
determined, and united.
Charlemagne fought the Saxons for thirty-three years. Though he
never lost a battle, they still held out. At first he was generous
and forgiving, for he was more magnanimous than Caesar; but they
could not be won by kindness. He was obliged to change his course,
and at last was as summary as Oliver Cromwell in Ireland. He is
even accused of cruelties. But war in the hands of masters has no
quarter to give, and no tears to shed. It was necessary to conquer
the Saxons, and Charlemagne used the requisite means. Sometimes
the harshest measures will most speedily effect the end. Did our
fathers ever dream of compromise with treacherous and hostile
Indians? War has a horrid maxim,--that "nothing is so successful
as success." Charlemagne, at last, was successful. The Saxons
were so completely subdued at the end of thirty-three years, that
they never molested civilized Europe again. They became civilized,
like the once invading Celts and Goths; and they even embraced the
religion of the conquerors. They became ultimately the best people
in Europe,--earnest, honest, and brave. They formed great kingdoms
and states, and became new barriers against fresh inundations from
the North and East. The Saxons formed the nucleus of the great
German Empire (or were incorporated with it) which arose in the
Middle Ages, and which to-day is the most powerful in Europe, and
the least corrupted by the vices of a luxurious life. The
descendants of those Saxons are among the most industrious and
useful settlers in the New World.
There was one mistake which Charlemagne made in reference to them.
He forced their conversion to a nominal Christianity. He immersed
them in the rivers of Saxony, whether they would or no. He would
make them Christians in his way. But then, who does not seek to
make converts in his way, whether enlightened or not? When have
the principles of religious toleration been understood? Did the
Puritans understand them, with all their professions? Do we
tolerate, in our hearts, those who differ from us? Do not men look
daggers, though they dare not use them? If we had the power, would
we not seek to produce conformity with our notions, like Queen
Elizabeth, or Oliver Cromwell, or Archbishop Laud? There is not
perhaps a village in America where a true catholicism reigns.
There is not a spot upon the globe where there is not some form of
religious persecution. Nor is there any thing more sincere than
religious bigotry. And where people have not fundamental
principles to fight about, they will fight about technicalities and
matters of no account, and all the more bitterly sometimes when the
objects of contention are not worth fighting about at all,--as in
forms of worship, or baptism. Such is the weakness of human
nature. Charlemagne was no exception to the race. But if he
wished to make Christians in his way, he was, on the whole,
enlightened. He caused the young Saxons, whom he baptized and
marked with the sign of the Cross, to be educated. He built
monasteries and churches in the conquered territories. He
recognized this,--that Christianity, whatever it be, is the
mightiest power of the world; and he bore his testimony in behalf
of the intellectual dignity of the clergy in comparison with other
classes. He encouraged missions as well as schools.
There was another Germanic tribe at that time which he held in
great alarm, but which he did not attack, since they were not
immediately dangerous. This tribe or race was the Norman, just
then beginning their ravages,--pirates in open boats. They had
dared to enter a port in Narbonensis Gaul for purposes of plunder.
Some took them for Africans, and others for British merchants.
Nay, said Charlemagne, they are not merchants, but cruel enemies;
and he covered his face with his iron hands and wept like a child.
He did not fear these barbarians, but he wept when he foresaw the
evil they would do when he was dead. "I weep," said he, "that they
should dare almost to land on my shores, in my lifetime." These
Normans escaped him. They conquered and they founded kingdoms.
But they did not replunge Europe in darkness. A barrier had been
made against their inundation. The Saxon conquest was that
barrier. Moreover, the Normans were the noblest race of barbarians
which then roamed through the forests of Germany, or skirted the
shores of Scandinavia. They had grand natural traits of character.
They were poetic, brave, and adventurous. They were superior to
the Saxons and the Franks. When converted, they were the great
allies of the Pope, and early became civilized. To them we trace
the noblest development of Gothic architecture. They became great
scholars and statesmen. They were more refined by nature than the
Saxons, and avoided their gluttonous habits. In after times they
composed the flower of European chivalry. It was providential that
they were not subdued,--that they became the leading race in
Northern Europe. To them we trace the mercantile greatness of
England, for they were born sailors. They never lost their natural
heroism, or love of power.
The next important conquest of Charlemagne was that of the Avares,--
a tribe of the Huns, of Slavonic origin. They are represented as
very hideous barbarians, and only thought of plunder. They never
sought to reconstruct. There seemed to be no end of their
invasions from the time of Attila. They were more formidable for
their numbers and destructive ravages than for their military
skill. There was a time, however, when they threatened the
combined forces of Germany and Rome; but Europe was delivered by
the battle of Poictiers,--the bloodiest battle on record,--when
they seemed to be annihilated. But they sprang up again, in new
invasions, in the ninth century. Had they conquered, civilization
would have been crushed out. But Charlemagne was successful
against them, and from that time to this they were shut out from
western Europe. They would be formidable now, for the Russians are
the descendants of these people, were it not for the barrier raised
against them by the Germans. The necessities of Europe still
require the vast military strength and organization of Germany, not
to fight France, but to awe Russia. Napoleon predicted that Europe
would become either French or Cossack; but there is little
probability of Russian aggressions in Europe, so long as Russia is
held in check by Germany.
Charlemagne had now delivered France and Germany from external
enemies. He then turned his arms against the Saracens of Spain.
This was the great mistake of his life. Yet every one makes
mistakes, however great his genius. Alexander made the mistake of
pushing his arms into India; and Napoleon made a great blunder in
invading Russia. Even Caesar died at the right time for his
military fame, for he was on the point of attempting the conquest
of Parthia, where, like Crassus, he would probably have perished,
or have lost his army. Needless conquests seem to be impossible in
the moral government of God, who rules the fate of war. Conquests
are only possible when civilization seems to require them. In
seeking to invade Spain, Charlemagne warred against a race from
whom Europe had nothing more to fear. His grandfather, Charles
Martel, had arrested the conquests of the Saracens; and they were
quiet in their settlements in Spain, and had made considerable
attainments in science and literature. Their schools of medicine
and their arts were in advance of the rest of Europe. They were
the translators of Aristotle, who reigned in the rising
universities during the Middle Ages. As this war was unnecessary,
Providence seemed to rebuke Charlemagne. His defeat at
Roncesvalles was one of the most memorable events in his military
history. Prodigies of valor were wrought by him and his gallant
Paladins. The early heroic poetry of the Middle Ages has
commemorated his exploits, as well as those of his nephew Roland,
to whom some writers have ascribed the origin of Chivalry. But the
Frankish forces were signally defeated amid the passes of the
Pyrenees; and it was not until after several centuries that the
Gothic princes of Spain shook off the yoke of their Saracenic
conquerors, and drove them from Europe.
The Lombard wars of Charlemagne are the last to which I allude.
These were undertaken in defence of the Church, to rescue his ally
the Pope. The Lombards belonged to the great Germanic family, but
they were unfriendly to the Pope and to the Church. They stood out
against the Empire, which was then the chief hope of Europe and of
civilization. They would have reduced the Pope to insignificance
and seized his territories, without uniting Italy. So Charlemagne,
like his father Pepin, lent his powerful aid to the Roman bishop,
and the Lombards were easily subdued. This conquest, although the
easiest which he ever made, most flattered his pride. Lombardy was
not only joined to his Empire, but he received unparalleled honors
from the Pope, being crowned by him Emperor of the West.
It was a proud day when, in the ancient metropolis of the world,
and in the fulness of his fame, Pope Leo III. placed the crown of
Augustus upon Charlemagne's brow, and gave to him, amid the
festivities of Christmas, his apostolic benediction. His dominions
now extended from Catalonia to the Bohemian forests, embracing
Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and the Spanish main,--the
largest empire which any one man has possessed since the fall of
the Roman Empire. What more natural than for Charlemagne to feel
that he had restored the Western Empire? What more natural than
that he should have taken the title, still claimed by the Austrian
emperor, in one sense his legitimate successor,--Kaiser, or Caesar?
In the possession of such enormous power, he naturally dreamed of
establishing a new universal military monarchy like that of the
Romans,--as Charles V. dreamed, and Napoleon after him. But this
is a dream that Providence has rebuked among all successive
conquerors. There may have been need of the universal monarchy of
the Caesars, that Christianity might spread in peace, and be
protected by a reign of law and order. This at least is one of the
platitudes of historians. Froude himself harps on it in his life
of Caesar. Historians are fond of exalting the glories of
imperialism, and everybody is dazzled by the splendor and power of
ancient Roman emperors. They do not, I think, sufficiently
consider the blasting influence of imperialism on the life of
nations, how it dries up the sources of renovation, how it
necessarily withers literature and philosophy, how nothing can
thrive under it but pomp and material glories, how it paralyzes all
virtuous impulses, how it kills all enthusiasm, how it crushes out
all hope and lofty aspirations, how it makes slaves of its best
subjects, how it fills the earth with fear, how it drains national
resources to support standing armies, how it mocks all enterprises
which do not receive imperial approbation, how everything is
concentrated to reflect the glory of one man or family; how
impossible, under its withering shade, is manly independence, or
the free expression of opinions or healthy growth; how it buries
up, under its armies, discontents and aspirations alike, and
creates nothing but machinery which must ultimately wear out and
leave a world in ruins, with nothing stable to take its place. Law
and order are good things, the preservation of property is
desirable, the punishment of crime is necessary; but there are
other things which are valuable also. Nothing is so valuable as
the preservation of national life; nothing is so healthy as scope
for energies; nothing is so contemptible and degrading as universal
sycophancy to official rule. There are no tyrants more oppressive
than the tools of absolute power. See in what a state imperialism
left the Roman Empire when it fell. There were no rallying forces;
there was no resurrection of heroes. Vitality had fled. Where
would Turkey be to-day without the European powers, if the Sultan's
authority were to fall? It would be in the state of ancient
Babylon or Persia when those empires fell.
There is another side to imperialism besides dreaded anarchies.
Moreover, the whole progress of civilization has been counter to
it. The fiats of eternal justice have pronounced against it,
because it is antagonistic to the dignity of man and the triumphs
of reason. I would not fall in with the cant of the dignity of
man, because there is no dignity to man without aid from God
Almighty through His spirit and the message he has sent in
Christianity. But there is dignity in man with the aid of a
regenerating gospel. Some people talk of the triumphs of
Christianity under the Roman emperors; but see how rapidly it was
corrupted by them when they sought the aid of its institutions to
bolster up their power. The power of Christianity is in its
truths; in its religion, and not in its forms and institutions, in
its inventions to uphold the arms of despotism and the tools of
despotism. It is, and it was, and it will be through all the ages
the great power of the world, against which it is vain to rebel.
And that government is really the best which unfetters its
spiritual influence, and encourages it; and not that government
which seeks to perpetuate its corrupt and worldly institutions.
The Roman emperors made Christianity an institution, and obscured
its truths. And perhaps that is one reason why Providence
permitted their despotism to pass away,--preferring the rude
anarchy of the Germanic nations to the dead mechanism of a lifeless
Church and imperial rottenness. Imperialism must ever end in
rottenness. And that is one reason why the heart of Christendom--I
mean the people of Europe, in its enlightened and virtuous sections
has ever opposed imperialism. The progress has been slow, but
marked, towards representative governments,--not the reign of the
people directly, but of those whom they select to represent them.
The victory has been nearly gained in England. In France the
progress has been uniform since the Revolution. Napoleon revived,
or sought to revive, the imperialism of Rome. He failed. There is
nothing which the French now so cordially detest, since their eyes
have been opened to the character and ends of that usurper, as his
imperialism. It cannot be revived any more easily than the oracles
of Dodona. Even in Germany there are dreadful discontents in view
of the imperialism which Bismarck, by the force of successful wars,
has seemingly revived. The awful standing armies are a menace to
all liberty and progress and national development. In Italy itself
there is the commencement of constitutional authority, although it
is united under a king. The great standing warfare of modern times
is constitutional authority against the absolute power of kings and
emperors. And the progress has been on the side of liberty
everywhere, with occasional drawbacks, such as when Louis Napoleon
revived the accursed despotism of his uncle, and by the same
means,--a standing army and promises of military glory.
Hence, in the order of Providence, the dream of Charlemagne as to
unbounded military aggrandizement could not be realized. He could
not revive the imperialism of Rome or Persia. No man will ever
arise in Europe who can re-establish it, except for a brief period.
It will be rebuked by the superintending Power, because it is fatal
to the highest development of nations, because all its glories are
delusory, because it sows the seeds of ruin. It produces that very
egotism, materialism, and sensuality, that inglorious rest and
pleasure, which, as everybody concedes, prepared the way for
violence.
And hence Charlemagne's empire went to pieces as soon as he was
dead. There was nothing permanent in his conquests, except those
made against barbarism. He was raised up to erect barriers against
fresh inroads of barbarians. His whole empire was finally split up
into petty sovereignties. In one sense he founded States, "since
he founded the States which sprang up from the dismemberment of his
empire. The kingdoms of Germany, Italy, France, Burgundy,
Lorraine, Navarre, all date to his memorable reign." But these
mediaeval kingdoms were feudal; the power of the kings was nominal.
Government passed from imperialism into the hands of nobles. The
government of Europe in the Middle Ages was a military aristocracy,
only powerful as the interests of the people were considered.
Kings and princes did not make much show, except in the trappings
of royalty,--in gorgeous dresses of purple and gold, to suit a
barbaric taste,--in the insignia of power without its reality. The
power was among the aristocracy, who, it must be confessed, ground
down the people by a hard feudal rule, but who did not grind the
souls out of them, like the imperialism of absolute monarchies,
with their standing armies. Under them the feudal nobles of Europe
at length recuperated. Virtues were born everywhere,--in England,
in France, in Germany, in Holland,--which were a savor of life unto
life: loyalty, self-respect, fidelity to covenants, chivalry,
sympathy with human misery, love of home, rural sports, a glorious
rural life, which gave stamina to character,--a material which
Christianity could work upon, and kindle the latent fires of
freedom, and the impulses of a generous enthusiasm. It was under
the fostering influences of small, independent chieftains that
manly strength and organized social institutions arose once more,--
the reserved power of unconquerable nations. Nobody hates
feudalism--in its corruptions, in its oppressions--more than I do.
But it was the transition stage from the anarchy which the collapse
of imperialism produced to the constitutional governments of our
times, if we could forget the absolute monarchies which flourished
on the breaking up of feudalism, when it became a tyranny and a
mockery, but which absolute monarchies flourished only one or two
hundred years,--a sort of necessity in the development of nations
to check the insolence and overgrown power of nobles, but after all
essentially different from the imperialism of Caesar or Napoleon,
since they relied on the support of nobles and municipalities more
than on a standing army; yea, on votes and grants from parliaments
to raise money to support the army,--certainly in England, as in
the time of Elizabeth. The Bourbons, indeed, reigned without
grants from the people or the nobility, and what was the logical
result?--a French Revolution! Would a French Revolution have been
possible under the Roman Caesars?
But I will not pursue this gradual development of constitutional
government from the anarchies which arose out of the fall of the
Roman Empire,--just the reverse of what happened in the history of
Rome; I say no more of the imperialism which Charlemagne sought to
restore, but was not permitted by Providence, and which, after all,
was the dream of his latter days, when, like Napoleon, he was
intoxicated by power and brilliant conquests; and I turn to
consider briefly his direct effects in civilization, which showed
his great and enlightened mind, and on which his fame in no small
degree rests.
Charlemagne was no insignificant legislator. His Capitularies may
not be equal to the laws of Justinian in natural justice, but were
adapted to his times and circumstances. He collected the scattered
codes, so far as laws were codified, of the various Germanic
nations, and modified them. He introduced a great Christian
element into his jurisprudence. He made use of the canons of the
Church. His code is more ecclesiastical than that of Theodosius
even, the last great Christian emperor. But in his day the clergy
wielded great power, and their ordinances and decisions were
directed to society as it was. The clergy were the great jurists
of their day. The spiritual courts decided matters of great
importance, and took cognizance of cases which were out of the
jurisdiction of temporal courts. Charlemagne recognized the value
of these spiritual courts, and aided them. He had no quarrels with
ecclesiastics, nor was he jealous of their power. He allied
himself with it. He was a friend of the clergy. One of the
peculiarities of all the Germanic laws, seen especially in those of
Ina and Alfred, was pecuniary compensation for crime: fifty
shillings, in England, would pay for the loss of a foot, and twenty
for a nose and four for a tooth; thus recognizing a principle seen
in our times in railroad accidents, though not recognized in our
civil laws in reference to crimes. This system of compensation
Charlemagne retained, which perhaps answered for his day.
He was also a great administrator. Nothing escaped his vigilance.
I do not read that he made many roads, or effected important
internal improvements. The age was too barbarous for the
development of national industries,--one of the main things which
occupy modern statesmen and governments. But whatever he did was
wise and enlightened. He rewarded merit; he made an alliance with
learned men; he sought out the right men for important posts; he
made the learned Alcuin his teacher and counsellor; he established
libraries and schools; he built convents and monasteries; he gave
encouragement to men of great attainments; he loved to surround
himself with learned men; the scholars of all countries sought his
protection and patronage, and found him a friend. Alcuin became
one of the richest men in his dominions, and Englebert received one
of his daughters in marriage. Napoleon professed a great
admiration for Charlemagne, although Frederic II. was his model
sovereign. But how differently Napoleon acted in this respect!
Napoleon was jealous of literary genius. He hated literary men.
He rarely invited them to his table, and was constrained in their
presence. He drove them out of the kingdom even. He wanted
nothing but homage,--and literary genius has no sympathy with brute
force, or machinery, or military exploits. But Charlemagne, like
Peter the Great, delighted in the society of all who could teach
him anything. He was a tolerably learned man himself, considering
his life of activity. He spoke Latin as fluently as his native
German, and it is said that he understood Greek. He liked to visit
schools, and witness the performances of the boys; and, provided
they made proficiency in their studies, he cared little for their
noble birth. He was no respecter of persons. With wrath he
reproved the idle. He promised rewards to merit and industry.
The most marked feature of his reign, outside his wars, was his
sympathy with the clergy. Here, too, he differed from Napoleon and
Frederic II. Mr. Hallam considers his alliance with the Church the
great error of his reign; but I believe it built up his throne. In
his time the clergy were the most influential people of the Empire
and the most enlightened; but at that time the great contest of the
Middle Ages between spiritual and temporal authority had not begun.
Ambrose, indeed, had rebuked Theodosius, and set in defiance the
empress when she interfered with his spiritual functions; and Leo
had firmly established the Papacy by emphasizing a divine right to
his decrees. But a Hildebrand and a Becket had not arisen to usurp
the prerogatives of their monarchs. Least of all did popes then
dream of subjecting the temporal powers and raising the spiritual
over them, so as to lead to issues with kings. That was a later
development in the history of the papacy. The popes of the eighth
and ninth centuries sought to heal disorder, to punish turbulent
chieftains, to sustain law and order, to establish a tribunal of
justice to which the discontented might appeal. They sought to
conserve the peace of the world. They sought to rule the Church,
rather than the world. They aimed at a theocratic ministry,--to be
the ambassadors of God Almighty,--to allay strife and division.
The clergy were the friends of order and law, and they were the
natural guardians of learning. They were kindness itself to the
slaves,--for slavery still prevailed. That was an evil with which
the clergy did not grapple; they would ameliorate it, but did not
seek to remove it. Yet they shielded the unfortunate and the
persecuted and the poor; they gave the only consolation which an
iron age afforded. The Church was gloomy, ascetic, austere, like
the cathedrals of that time. Monks buried themselves in crypts;
they sang mournful songs; they saw nothing but poverty and misery,
and they came to the relief in a funereal way. But they were not
cold and hard and cruel, like baronial lords. Secular lords were
rapacious, and ground down the people, and mocked and trampled upon
them; but the clergy were hospitable, gentle, and affectionate.
They sympathized with the people, from whom they chiefly sprang.
They had their vices, but those vices were not half so revolting as
those of barons and knights. Intellectually, the clergy were at
all times the superiors of these secular lords. They loved the
peaceful virtues which were generated in the consecrated convent.
The passions of nobles urged them on to perpetual pillage,
injustice, and cruelty. The clergy quarrelled only among
themselves. They were human, and not wholly free from human
frailties; but they were not public robbers. They were the best
farmers of their times; they cultivated lands, and made them
attractive by fruits and flowers. They were generally industrious;
every convent was a beehive, in which various kinds of manufactures
were produced. The monks aspired even to be artists. They
illuminated manuscripts, as well as copied them; they made
tapestries and beautiful vestments. They were a peaceful and
useful set of men, at this period, outside their spiritual
functions; they built grand churches; they had fruitful gardens;
they were exceedingly hospitable. Every monastery was an inn, as
well as a beehive, to which all travellers resorted, and where no
pay was exacted. It was a retreat for the unfortunate, which no
one dared assail. And it was vocal with songs and anthems.
The clergy were not only thus general benefactors in an age of
turbulence and crime, in spite of all their narrowness and
spiritual pride and their natural ambition for power, but they lent
a helping hand to the peasantry. The Church was democratic, and
enabled the poor to rise according to their merits, while nobles
combined to crush them or keep them in an ignoble sphere. In the
Church, the son of a murdered peasant could rise according to his
deserts; but if he followed a warrior to the battle-field, no
virtues, no talents, no bravery could elevate him,--he was still a
peasant, a low-born menial. If he entered a monastery, he might
pass from office to office until as a mitred abbot he would become
the master of ten thousand acres, the counsellor of kings, the
equal of that proud baron in whose service his father spent his
abject life. The great Hildebrand was the son of a carpenter. The
Church ever recognized, what feudality did not,--the claims of man
as man; and enabled peasants' sons, if they had abilities and
virtues, to rise to proud positions,--to be the patrons of the
learned, the companions of princes, the ministers of kings.
And that is the reason why Charlemagne befriended the Church and
elevated it, because its influence was civilizing. He sought to
establish among the clergy a counterbalancing power to that of
nobles. Who can doubt that the influence of the Church was better
than that of nobles in the Middle Ages? If it ground down society
by a spiritual yoke, that yoke was necessary, for the rude Middle
Ages could be ruled only by fear. What fear more potent than the
destruction of the soul in a future life! It was by this weapon--
excommunication--that Europe was governed. We may abhor it, but it
was the great idea of Mediaeval Europe, which no one could resist,
and which kept society from dissolution. Charlemagne may have
erred in thus giving power and consideration to the clergy, in view
of the subsequent encroachments of the popes. But he never
anticipated the future quarrels between his successors and the
popes, for the popes were not then formidable as the antagonists of
kings. I believe his policy was the best for Europe, on the whole.
The infancy of the Gothic races was long, dark, dreary, and
unfortunate, but it prepared them for the civilization which they
scorned.
Such were the services which this great sovereign rendered to his
times and to Europe. He probably saved it from renewed barbarism.
He was the great legislator of the Middle Ages, and the greatest
friend--after Constantine and Theodosius--of which the Church can
boast. With him dawned the new civilization. He brought back
souvenirs of Rome and the Empire. Not for himself did he live, but
for the welfare of the nations he governed. It was his example
which Alfred sought to imitate. Though a warrior, he saw something
greater than the warrior's excellence. It is said he was eloquent,
like Julius Caesar. He loved music and all the arts. In his
palace at Aix-la-Chapelle were sung the songs of the earliest poets
of Germany. He took great pains to introduce the Gregorian chant.
He was simple in dress, and only on rare occasions did he indulge
in parade. He was temperate in eating and drinking, as all the
famous warriors have been. He absolutely abhorred drunkenness, the
great vice of the Northern nations. During meals he listened to
the lays of minstrels or the readings of his secretaries. He took
unwearied pains with the education of his daughters, and he was so
fond of them that they even accompanied him in his military
expeditions. He was not one of those men that Gibbon appreciated;
but his fame is steadily growing, after a lapse of a thousand
years. His whole appearance was manly, cheerful, and dignified.
His countenance reflected a child-like serenity. He was one of the
few men, like David, who was not spoiled by war and flatteries.
Though gentle, he was subject to fits of anger, like Theodosius;
but he did not affect anger, like Napoleon, for theatrical effect.
His greatness and his simplicity, his humanity and his religious
faith, are typical of the Germanic race. He died A. D. 814, after
a reign of half a century, lamented by his own subjects and to be
admired by succeeding generations. Hallam, though not eloquent
generally, has pronounced his most beautiful eulogy, "written in
the disgraces and miseries of succeeding times. He stands alone
like a rock in the ocean, like a beacon on a waste. His sceptre
was the bow of Ulysses, not to be bent by a weaker hand. In the
dark ages of European history, his reign affords a solitary
resting-place between two dark periods of turbulence and ignominy,
deriving the advantage of contrast both from that of the preceding
dynasty and of a posterity for whom he had founded an empire which
they were unworthy and unequal to maintain."
To such a tribute I can add nothing. His greatness consists in
this, that, born amidst barbarism, he was yet the friend of
civilization, and understood its elemental principles, and
struggled forty-seven years to establish them,--failing only
because his successors and subjects were not prepared for them, and
could not learn them until the severe experience of ten centuries,
amidst disasters and storms, should prove the value of the "old
basal walls and pillars" which remained unburied amid the despised
ruins of antiquity, and show that no structure could adequately
shelter the European nations which was not established by the
beautiful union of German vigor with Christian art,--by the
combined richness of native genius with those immortal treasures
which had escaped the wreck of the classic world.
AUTHORITIES.
Eginhard's Vita Caroli Magni; Le Clerc's De la Bruyere, Histoire du
Regne de Charlemagne; Haureau's Charlemagne et son Cour; Gaillard's
Histoire de Charlemagne; Lorenz's Karls des Grossen. There is a
tolerably popular history of Charlemagne by James Bulfinch,
entitled "Legends of Charlemagne;" also a Life by James the
novelist. Henri Martin, Sismondi, and Michelet may be consulted;
also Hallam's Middle Ages, Milman's Latin Christianity, Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Biographie Universelle, and
the Encyclopaedias.
HILDEBRAND.
A. D. 1020-1085.
THE PAPAL EMPIRE.
We associate with Hildebrand the great contest of the Middle Ages
between spiritual and temporal authority, the triumph of the
former, and its supremacy in Europe until the Reformation. What
great ideas and events are interwoven with that majestic
domination,--not in one age, but for fifteen centuries; not
religious merely, but political, embracing as it were the whole
progress of European society, from the fall of the Roman Empire to
the Protestant Reformation; yea, intimately connected with the
condition of Europe to the present day, and not of Europe only, but
America itself! What an august power is this Catholic empire,
equally great as an institution and as a religion! What lessons of
human experience, what great truths of government, what subtile
influences, reaching alike the palaces of kings and the hovels of
peasants, are indissolubly linked with its marvellous domination,
so that whether in its growth or decay it is more suggestive than
the rise and fall of any temporal empire. It has produced,
probably, more illustrious men than any political State in Europe.
It has aimed to accomplish far grander ends. It is invested with
more poetic interest. Its policy, its heroes, its saints, its
doctors, its dignitaries, its missions, its persecutions, all rise
up before us with varied but never-ending interest, when seriously
contemplated. It has proved to be the most wonderful fabric of
what we call worldly wisdom that our world has seen,--controlling
kings, dictating laws to ancient monarchies, and binding the souls
of millions with a more perfect despotism than Oriental emperors
ever sought or dreamed. And what a marvellous vitality it seems to
have! It has survived the attacks of its countless enemies; it has
recovered from the shock of the Reformation; it still remains
majestic and powerful, extending its arms of paternal love or
Briarean terror over half of Christendom. As a temporal
government, rivalling kings in the pomps of war and the pride of
armies, it may be passing away; but as an organization to diffuse
and conserve religious truths,--yea, even to bring a moral pressure
on the minds of princes and governors, and reinforce its ranks with
the mighty and the noble,--it seems to be as potent as ever. It is
still sending its missionaries, its prelates, and its cardinals
into the heart of Protestant countries, who anticipate and boast of
new victories. It derides the dissensions and the rationalistic
speculations of the Protestants, and predicts that they will either
become open Pagans or re-enter the fold of Saint Peter. No longer
do angry partisans call it the "Beast" or the "Scarlet Mother" or
the "predicted Antichrist," since its religious creeds in their
vital points are more in harmony with the theology of venerated
Fathers than those of some of the progressive and proudest parties
which call themselves Protestant. In Germany, in France,--shall I
add, in England and America?--it is more in earnest, and more
laborious and self-denying than many sects among the Protestants.
In Germany--in those very seats of learning and power and fashion
which once were kindled into lofty enthusiasm by the voice of
Luther--who is it that desert the churches and disregard the
sacraments, the Catholics or the Protestants?
Surely such a power, whether we view it as an institution or as a
religion, cannot be despised, even by the narrowest and most
fanatical Protestant. It is too grand and venerable for sarcasm,
ridicule, or mockery. It is too potent and respectable to be
sneered at or lied about. No cause can be advanced permanently
except by adherence to the truth, whether it be agreeable or not.
If the Papacy were a mere despotism, having nothing else in view
than the inthralment of mankind,--of which it has been accused,--
then mankind long ago, in lofty indignation, would have hurled it
from its venerable throne. But despotic as its yoke is in the eyes
of Protestants, and always has been and always may be, it is
something more than that, having at heart the welfare of the very
millions whom it rules by working on their fears. In spite of
dogmas which are deductions from questionable premises, or which
are at war with reason, and ritualism borrowed from other
religions, and "pious frauds," and Jesuitical means to compass
desirable ends,--which Protestants indignantly discard, and which
they maintain are antagonistic to the spirit of primitive
Christianity,--still it is also the defender and advocate of vital
Christian truths, to which we trace the hopes and consolations of
mankind. As the conservator of doctrines common to all Christian
sects it cannot be swept away by the hand of man; nor as a
government, confining its officers and rules to the spiritual
necessities of its members. Its empire is spiritual rather than
temporal. Temporal monarchs are hurled from their thrones. The
long line of the Bourbons vanishes before the tempests of
revolution, and they who were borne into power by these tempests
are in turn hurled into ignominious banishment; but the Pope--he
still sits secure on the throne of the Gregories and the Clements,
ready to pronounce benedictions or hurl anathemas, to which half of
Europe bows in fear or love.
Whence this strange vitality? What are the elements of a power so
enduring and so irresistible? What has given to it its greatness
and its dignity? I confess I gaze upon it as a peasant surveys a
king, as a boy contemplates a queen of beauty,--as something which
may be talked about, yet removed beyond our influence, and no more
affected by our praise or censure than is a procession of cardinals
by the gaze of admiring spectators in Saint Peter's Church. Who
can measure it, or analyze it, or comprehend it? The weapons of
reason appear to fall impotent before its haughty dogmatism.
Genius cannot reconcile its inconsistencies. Serenely it sits,
unmoved amid all the aggressions of human thought and all the
triumphs of modern science. It is both lofty and degraded; simple,
yet worldly wise; humble, yet scornful and proud; washing beggars'
feet, yet imposing commands on the potentates of earth; benignant,
yet severe on all who rebel; here clothed in rags, and there
revelling in palaces; supported by charities, yet feasting the
princes of the earth; assuming the title of "servant of the
servants of God," yet arrogating the highest seat among worldly
dignitaries. Was there ever such a contradiction?--"glory in
debasement, and debasement in glory,"--type of the misery and
greatness of man? Was there ever such a mystery, so occult are its
arts, so subtile its policy, so plausible its pretensions, so
certain its shafts? How imposing the words of paternal
benediction! How grand the liturgy brought down from ages of
faith! How absorbed with beatific devotion appears to be the
worshipper at its consecrated altars! How ravishing the music and
the chants of grand ceremonials! How typical the churches and
consecrated monuments of the passion of Christ! Everywhere you see
the great emblem of our redemption,--on the loftiest pinnacle of
the Mediaeval cathedral, on the dresses of the priests, over the
gorgeous altars, in the ceremony of the Mass, in the baptismal
rite, in the paintings of the side chapels; everywhere are rites
and emblems betokening maceration, grief, sacrifice, penitence, the
humiliation of humanity before the awful power of divine
Omnipotence, whose personality and moral government no Catholic is
tempted to deny.
And yet what crimes and abominations have not been committed in the
name of the Church? If we go back and accept the history of the
darker ages, what wars has not this Church encouraged, what
discords has she not incited, what superstitions has she not
indorsed, what pride has she not arrogated, what cruelties has she
not inflicted, what countries has she not robbed, what hardships
has she not imposed, what deceptions has she not used, what avenues
of thought has she not guarded with a flaming sword, what truth has
she not perverted, what goodness has she not mocked and persecuted?
Ah, interrogate the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the shades of Jerome
of Prague, of Huss, of Savonarola, of Cranmer, of Coligny, of
Galileo; interrogate the martyrs of the Thirty Years' War, and
those who were slain by the dragonnades of Louis XIV., those who
fell by the hand of Alva and Charles IX.; go to Smithfield, and
Paris on Saint Bartholomew; think of gunpowder plots and
inquisitions, and intrigues and tortures, all vigorously carried on
under the cloak of Religion--barbarities worse than those of
savages, inflicted at the command of the ministers of a gospel of
love!
I am compelled to allude to these things; I do not dwell on them,
since they were the result of the intolerance of human nature as
much as the bigotry of the Church,--faults of an age, more than of
a religion; although, whether exaggerated or not, more disgraceful
than the persecutions of Christians by Roman emperors.
As for the supreme rulers of this contradictory Church, so
benevolent and yet so cruel, so enlightened and yet so fanatical,
so humble and yet so proud,--this institution of blended piety and
fraud, equally renowned for saints, theologians, statesmen,
drivellers, and fanatics; the joy and the reproach, the glory and
the shame of earth,--there never were greater geniuses or greater
fools: saints of almost preternatural sanctity, like the first Leo
and Gregory, or hounds like Boniface VIII. or Alexander VI.; an
array of scholars and dunces, ascetics and gluttons, men who
adorned and men who scandalized their lofty position; and yet, on
the whole, we are forced to admit, the most remarkable body of
rulers any empire has known, since they were elevated by their
peers, and generally for talents or services, at a period of life
when character is formed and experience is matured. They were not
greater than their Church or their age, like the Charlemagnes and
Peters of secular history, but they were the picked men, the best
representatives of their Church; ambitious, doubtless, and worldly,
as great potentates generally are, but made so by the circumstances
which controlled them. Who can wield irresponsible power and not
become arrogant, and perhaps self-indulgent? It requires the
almost superhuman virtue of a Marcus Aurelius or a Saint Louis to
crucify the pride of rank and power. If the president of a college
or of a railroad or of a bank becomes a different man to the eye of
an early friend, what can be expected of those who are raised above
public opinion, and have no fetters on their wills,--men who are
regarded as infallible and feel themselves supreme!
But of all these three hundred or four hundred men who have swayed
the destinies of Europe,--an uninterrupted line of pontiffs for
fifteen hundred years or more, no one is so famous as Gregory VII.
for the grandeur of his character, the heroism of his struggles,
and the posthumous influence of his deeds. He was too great a man
to be called by his papal title. He is best known by his baptismal
name, Hildebrand, the greatest hero of the Roman Church. There are
some men whose titles add nothing to their august names,--David,
Julius, Constantine, Augustine. When a man has become very eminent
we drop titles altogether, except in military life. We say Daniel
Webster, Edward Everett, Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin, William Pitt. Hildebrand is a greater name than
Gregory VII., and with him is identified the greatest struggle of
the Papacy against the temporal powers. I do not aim to dissect
his character so much as to present his services to the Church. I
wish to show why and how he is identified with movements of supreme
historical importance. It would be easy to make him out a saint
and martyr, and equally so to paint him as a tyrant and usurper.
It is of little consequence to us whether he was ascetic or
ambitious or unscrupulous; but it IS of consequence to show the
majestic power of those ideas by which he ruled the Middle Ages,
and which will never pass away as sublime agencies so long as men
are ignorant and superstitious. As a man he no longer lives, but
his thunderbolts are perpetual powers, since they still alarm the
fears of men.
Still, his personal history is not uninteresting. Born of humble
parents in Italy in the year 1020, the son of a carpenter, he rose
by genius and virtue to the highest offices and dignities. But his
greatness was in force of character rather than original ideas,--
like that of Washington, or William III., or the Duke of
Wellington. He had not the comprehensive intellect of Charlemagne,
nor the creative genius of Peter of Russia, but he had the sagacity
of Richelieu and the iron will of Napoleon. He was statesman as
well as priest,--marvellous for his activity, insight into human
nature, vast executive abilities, and dauntless heroism. He
comprehended the only way whereby Christendom could be governed,
and unhesitatingly used the means of success. He was not a great
scholar, or theologian, or philosopher, but a man of action,
embracing opportunities and striking decisive blows. From first to
last he was devoted to his cause, which was greater than himself,--
even the spiritual supremacy of the Papacy. I do not read of great
intellectual precocity, like that of Cicero and William Pitt, nor
of great attainments, like those of Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, nor
even an insight, like that of Bacon, into what constitutes the
dignity of man and the true glory of civilization; but, like
Ambrose and the first Leo, he was early selected for important
missions and responsible trusts, all of which he discharged with
great fidelity and ability. His education was directed by the
monks of Cluny,--that princely abbey in Burgundy where "monks were
sovereigns and sovereigns were monks." Like all earnest monks, he
was ascetic, devotional, and self-sacrificing. Like all men
ambitions to rule, "he learned how to obey." He pondered on the
Holy Scriptures as well as on the canons of the Church. So marked
a man was he that he was early chosen as prior of his convent; and
so great were his personal magnetism, eloquence, and influence that
"he induced Bruno, the Bishop of Toul, when elected pope by the
Emperor of Germany, to lay aside the badges and vestments of the
pontifical office, and refuse his title, until he should be elected
by the clergy and people of Rome,"--thus showing that at the age of
twenty-nine he comprehended the issues of the day, and meditated on
the gigantic changes it was necessary to make before the pope could
be the supreme ruler of Christendom.
The autocratic idea of Leo I., and the great Gregory who sent his
missionaries to England, was that to which Hildebrand's ardent soul
clung with preternatural earnestness, as the only government fit
for turbulent and superstitious ages. He did not originate this
idea, but he defended and enforced it as had never been done
before, so that to many minds he was the great architect of the
papal structure. It was a rare spectacle to see a sovereign
pontiff lay aside the insignia of his grandeur at the bidding of
this monk of Cluny; it was grander to see this monk laying the
foundation of an irresistible despotism, which was to last beyond
the time of Luther. Not merely was Leo IX. his tool, but three
successive popes were chosen at his dictation. And when he became
cardinal and archdeacon he seems to have been the inspiring genius
of the papal government, undertaking the most important missions,
curbing the turbulent spirit of the Roman princes, and assisting in
all ecclesiastical councils. It was by his suggestion that abbots
were deposed, and bishops punished, and monarchs reprimanded. He
was the prime minister of four popes before he accepted that high
office to which he doubtless had aspired while meditating as a monk
amid the sunny slopes of Cluny, since he knew that the exigences of
the Church required a bold and able ruler,--and who in Christendom
was bolder and more far-reaching than he? He might have been
elevated to the chair of Saint Peter at an earlier period, but he
was contented with power rather than glory, knowing that his day
would come, and at a time when his extraordinary abilities would be
most needed. He could afford to wait; and no man is truly great
who cannot bide his time.
At last Hildebrand received the reward of his great services,--"a
reward," says Stephen, "which he had long contemplated, but which,
with self-controlling policy, he had so long declined." In the
year 1073 Hildebrand became Gregory VII., and his memorable
pontificate began as a reformer of the abuses of his age, and the
intrepid defender of that unlimited and absolute despotism which
inthralled not merely the princes of Europe, but the mind of
Christendom itself. It was he who not only proclaimed the
liberties of the people against nobles, and made the Church an
asylum for misery and oppression, but who realized the idea that
the Church was the mother of spiritual principles, and that the
spiritual authority should be raised over all temporal power.
In the great crises of States and Empires deliverers seem to be
raised up by Divine Providence to restore peace and order, and
maintain the first condition of society, or extricate nations from
overwhelming calamities. Thus Charlemagne appeared at the right
time to prevent the overthrow of Europe by new waves of barbaric
invasion. Thus William the Silent preserved the nationality of
Holland, and Gustavus Adolphus gave religious liberty to Germany
when persecution was apparently successful. Thus Richelieu
undermined feudalism in France, and established absolutism as one
of the needed forces of his turbulent age, even as Napoleon gave
law and order to France when distracted by the anarchism of a
revolution which did not comprehend the liberty which was invoked.
So Hildebrand was raised up to establish the only government which
could rescue Europe from the rapacities of feudal nobles, and
establish law and order in the hands of the most enlightened class;
so that, like Peter the Great, he looms up as a reformer as well as
a despot. He appears in a double light.
Now you ask: "What were his reforms, and what were his schemes of
aggrandizement, for which we honor him while we denounce him?" We
cannot see the reforms he attempted without glancing at the
enormous evils which stared him in the face.
Society in Europe, in the eleventh century, was nearly as dark and
degraded as it was on the fall of the Merovingian dynasty. In some
respects it had reached the lowest depth of wretchedness which the
Middle Ages ever saw. Never had the clergy been more worldly or
devoted to temporal things. They had not the piety of the fourth
century, nor the intelligence of the sixteenth century; they were
powerful and wealthy, but had grown corrupt. Monastic institutions
covered the face of Europe, but the monks had sadly departed from
the virtues which partially redeemed the miseries that succeeded
the fall of the Roman Empire. The lives of the clergy, regular and
secular, still compared favorably with the lives of the feudal
nobility, who had, in addition to other vices, the vices of robbers
and bandits. But still the clergy had fallen far from the high
standard of earlier ages. Monasteries sought to be independent of
all foreign control and of episcopal jurisdiction. They had been
enormously enriched by princes and barons, and they owned, with the
other clergy, half the lands of Europe, and more than half its
silver and gold. The monks fattened on all the luxuries which then
were known; they neglected the rules of their order and lived in
idleness,--spending their time in the chase, or in taverns and
brothels. Hardly a great scholar or theologian had arisen among
them since the Patristic age, with the exception of a few schoolmen
like Anselm and Peter Lombard. Saint Bernard had not yet appeared
to reform the Benedictines, nor Dominic and Saint Francis to found
new orders. Gluttony and idleness were perhaps the characteristic
vices of the great body of the monks, who numbered over one hundred
thousand. Hunting and hawking were the most innocent of their
amusements. They have been accused of drinking toasts in honor of
the Devil, and celebrating Mass in a state of intoxication. "Not
one in a thousand," says Hallam, "could address to one another a
common letter of salutation." They were a walking libel on
everything sacred. Read the account of their banquets in the
annals which have come down to us of the tenth and eleventh
centuries, when convents were so numerous and rich. If Dugdale is
to be credited, their gluttony exceeded that of any previous or
succeeding age. Their cupidity, their drunken revels, their
infamous haunts, their disgusting coarseness, their hypocrisy,
ignorance, selfishness, and superstition were notorious. Yet the
monks were not worse than the secular clergy, high and low.
Bishoprics and all benefices were bought and sold; "canons were
trodden under foot; ancient traditions were turned out of doors;
old customs were laid aside;" boys were made archbishops; ludicrous
stories were recited in the churches; the most disgraceful crimes
were pardoned for money. Desolation, according to Cardinal
Baronius, was seen in the temples of the Lord. As Petrarch said of
Avignon in a better age, "There is no pity, no charity, no faith,
no fear of God. The air, the streets, the houses, the markets, the
beds, the hotels, the churches, even the altars consecrated to God,
are all peopled with knaves and liars;" or, to use the still
stronger language of a great reviewer, "The gates of hell appeared
to roll back on their infernal hinges, that there might go forth
malignant spirits to empty the vials of wrath on the patrimony even
of the great chief of the apostles."
These vices, it is true, were not confined to the clergy. All
classes were alike forlorn, miserable, and corrupt. It was a
gloomy period. The Church, whenever religious, was sad and
despairing. The contemplative hid themselves in noisome and
sepulchral crypts. The inspiring chants of Ambrose gave place to
gloomy and monotonous antiphonal singing,--that is, when the monks
confined themselves to their own vocation. What was especially
needed was a reform among the clergy themselves. They indeed owned
their allegiance to the Pope, as the supreme head of the Church,
but their fealty was becoming a mockery. They could not support
the throne of absolutism if they were not respected by the laity.
Baronial and feudal power was rapidly gaining over spiritual, and
this was a poor exchange for the power of the clergy, if it led to
violence and rapine. It is to maintain law and order, justice and
safety, that all governments are established.
Hildebrand saw and lamented the countless evils of the day,
especially those which were loosening the bands of clerical
obedience, and undermining the absolutism which had become the
great necessity of his age. He made up his mind to reform these
evils. No pope before him had seriously undertaken this gigantic
task. The popes who for two hundred years had preceded him were a
scandal and a reproach to their exalted position. These heirs of
Saint Peter wasted their patrimony in pleasures and pomps. At no
period of the papal history was the papal chair filled with such
bad or incompetent men. Of these popes two were murdered, five
were driven into exile, and four were deposed. Some were raised to
prominence by arms, and others by money. John X. commanded an army
in person; John XI. died in a fit of debauchery; and John XII. was
murdered by one of the infamous women whom he patronized. Benedict
IX. was driven from the throne by robbery and murder, while Gregory
VI. purchased the papal dignity. For two hundred years no
commanding character had worn the tiara.
Hildebrand, however, set a new example, and became a watchful
shepherd of his fold. His private life was without reproach; he
was absorbed in his duties; he sympathized with learning and
learned men. He was the friend of Lanfranc, and it was by his
influence that this great prelate was appointed to the See of
Canterbury, and a closer union was formed with England. He infused
by his example a quiet but noble courage into the soul of Anselm.
He had great faults, of course,--faults of his own and faults of
his age. I wonder why so STRONG a man has escaped the admiring
eulogium of Carlyle. Guizot compares him with the Russian Peter.
In some respects he reminds me of Oliver Cromwell; since both
equally deplored the evils of the day, and both invoked the aid of
God Almighty. Both were ambitious, and unhesitating in the use of
tools. Neither of them was stained by vulgar vices, nor seduced
from his course by love of ease or pleasure. Both are to be
contemplated in the double light of reformer and usurper. Both
were honest, and both were unscrupulous; honest in seeking to
promote public morality and the welfare of society, and
unscrupulous in the arts by which their power was gained.
That which filled the soul of Hildebrand with especial grief was
the alienation of the clergy from their highest duties, their
worldly lives, and their frail support in his efforts to elevate
the spiritual power. Therefore he determined to make a reform of
the clergy themselves, having in view all the time their assistance
in establishing the papal supremacy. He attacked the clergy where
they were weakest. They--the secular ones, the parish priests--
were getting married, especially in Germany and France. They were
setting at defiance the laws of celibacy; they not only sought
wives, but they lived in concubinage.
Now celibacy had been regarded as the supernal virtue from the time
of Saint Jerome. It was supposed to be a state most favorable to
Christian perfection; it animated the existence of the most noted
saints. Says Jerome, "Take axe in hand and hew down the sterile
tree of marriage." This notion of the superior virtue of virginity
was one of the fruits of those Eastern theogonies which were
engrafted on the early Church, growing out of the Oriental idea of
the inalienable evil of matter. It was one of the fundamental
principles of monasticism; and monasticism, wherever born--whether
in India or the Syrian deserts--was one of the established
institutions of the Church. It was indorsed by Benedict as well as
by Basil; it had taken possession of the minds of the Gothic
nations more firmly even than of the Eastern. The East never saw
such monasteries as those which covered Italy, France, Germany, and
England; they were more needed among the feudal robbers of Europe
than in the effeminate monarchies of Asia. Moreover it was in
monasteries that the popes had ever found their strongest
adherents, their most zealous supporters. Without the aid of
convents the papal empire might have crumbled. Monasticism and the
papacy were strongly allied; one supported the other. So efficient
were monastic institutions in advocating the idea of a theocracy,
as upheld by the popes, that they were exempted from episcopal
authority. An abbot was as powerful and independent as a bishop.
But to make the Papacy supreme it was necessary to call in the aid
of the secular priests likewise. Unmarried priests, being more
like monks, were more efficient supporters of the papal throne. To
maintain celibacy, therefore, was always in accordance with papal
policy.
But Nature had gradually asserted its claims over tradition and
authority. The clergy, especially in France and Germany, were
setting at defiance the edicts of popes and councils. The glory of
celibacy was in an eclipse.
No one comprehended the necessity of celibacy, among the clergy,
more clearly than Hildebrand,--himself a monk by education and
sympathy. He looked upon married life, with all its hallowed
beauty, as a profanation for a priest. In his eyes the clergy were
married only to the Church. "Domestic affections suited ill with
the duties of a theocratic ministry." Anything which diverted the
labors of the clergy from the Church seemed to him an outrage and a
degeneracy. How could they reach the state of beatific existence
if they were to listen to the prattle of children, or be engrossed
with the joys of conjugal or parental love? So he assembled a
council, and caused it to pass canons to the effect that married
priests should not perform any clerical office; that the people
should not even be present at Mass celebrated by them; that all who
had wives--or concubines, as he called them--should put them away;
and that no one should be ordained who did not promise to remain
unmarried during his whole life.
Of course there was a violent opposition. A great outcry was
raised, especially in Germany. The whole body of the secular
priests exclaimed against the proceeding. At Mentz they threatened
the life of the archbishop, who attempted to enforce the decree.
At Paris a numerous synod was assembled, in which it was voted that
Gregory ought not here to be obeyed. But Gregory was stronger than
his rebellious clergy,--stronger than the instincts of human
nature, stronger than the united voice of reason and Scripture. He
fell back on the majestic power of prevailing ideas, on the ascetic
element of the early Church, on the traditions of monastic life.
He was supported by more than a hundred thousand monks, by the
superstitions of primitive ages, by the example of saints and
martyrs, by his own elevated rank, by the allegiance due to him as
head of the Church. Excommunications were hurled, like
thunderbolts, into remotest hamlets, and the murmurs of indignant
Christendom were silenced by the awful denunciations of God's
supposed vicegerent. The clergy succumbed before such a terrible
spiritual force. The fear of hell--the great idea by which the
priests themselves controlled their flocks--was more potent than
any temporal good. What priest in that age would dare resist his
spiritual monarch on almost any point, and especially when
disobedience was supposed to entail the burnings of a physical hell
forever and ever? So celibacy was re-established as a law of the
Christian Church at the bidding of that far-seeing genius who had
devised the means of spiritual despotism. That law--so gloomy, so
unnatural, so fraught with evil--has never been repealed; it still
rules the Catholic priesthood of Europe and America. Nor will it
be repealed so long as the ideas of the Middle Ages have more force
than enlightened reason. It is an abominable law, but who can
doubt its efficacy in cementing the power of the popes?
But simony, or the sale of eeclesiastical benefices, was a still
more alarming evil to the mind of Gregory. It was the great
scandal of the Church and age. Here we honor the Pope for striving
to remove it. And yet its abolition was no easy thing. He came in
contact with the selfishness of barons and kings. He found it an
easier matter to take away the wives of priests than the purses of
princes. Priests who had vowed obedience might consent to the
repudiation of their wives, but would great temporal robbers part
with their spoils? The sale of benefices was one great source of
royal and baronial revenues. Bishoprics, once conferred for wisdom
and piety, had become prizes for the rapacious and ambitious.
Bishops and abbots were most frequently chosen from the ranks of
the great. Powerful Sees were the gifts of kings to their
favorites or families, or were bought by the wealthy; so that
worldly or incapable men were made overseers of the Church of
Christ. The clergy were in danger of being hopelessly secularized.
And the evil spread to the extremities of the clerical body. The
princes and barons were getting control of the Church itself.
Bishops often possessed a plurality of Sees. Children were
elevated to episcopal thrones. Sycophants, courtiers, jesters,
imbecile sons of princes, became great ecclesiastical dignitaries.
Who can wonder at the degeneracy of the clergy when they held their
cures at the hands of lay patrons, to whom they swore allegiance
for the temporalities of their benefices? Even the ring and the
crozier, the emblems of spiritual authority,--once received at the
hand of metropolitan archbishops alone,--were now bestowed by
temporal sovereigns, who claimed thereby fealty and allegiance; so
that princes had gradually usurped the old rights of the Church,
and Gregory resolved to recover them. So long as emperors and
kings could fill the rich bishoprics and abbacies with their
creatures, the papal dominion was weakened in its most vital point,
and might become a dream. This evil was rapidly undermining the
whole ecclesiastical edifice, and it required a hero of prodigious
genius, energy, and influence to reform it.
Hildebrand saw and comprehended the whole extent and bearing of the
evil, and resolved to remove it or die in the attempt. It was not
only undermining his throne, but was secularizing the Church and
destroying the real power of the clergy. He made up his mind to
face the difficulty in its most dreaded quarters. He knew that the
attempt to remove this scandal would entail a desperate conflict
with the princes of the earth. Before this, popes and princes were
generally leagued together; they played into each other's hands:
but now a battle was to be fought between the temporal and
spiritual powers. He knew that princes would never relinquish so
lucrative a source of profit as the sale of powerful Sees, unless
the right to sell them were taken away by some tremendous conflict.
He therefore prepared for the fight, and forged his weapons and
gathered together his forces. Nor would he waste time by idle
negotiations; it was necessary to act with promptness and vigor.
No matter how great the danger; no matter how powerful his enemies.
The Church was in peril; and he resolved to come to the rescue,
cost what it might. What was his life compared with the sale of
God's heritage? For what was he placed in the most exalted post of
the Church, if not to defend her in an alarming crisis?
In resolving to separate forever the spiritual from the temporal
power, Hildebrand followed in the footsteps of Ambrose. But he had
also deeper designs. He resolved to raise, if possible, the
spiritual ABOVE the temporal power. Kings should be subject to the
Church, not the Church to the kings of the earth. He believed that
he was the appointed vicar of the Almighty to rule the world in
peace, on the principles of eternal love; that Christ had
established a new theocracy, and had delegated his power to the
Apostle Peter, which had descended to the Pope as the Apostle's
legitimate successor.
I say nothing here of this colossal claim, of this ingenious
principle, on which the monarchical power of the Papacy rests. It
is the great fact of the Middle Ages. And yet, but for this
theocratic idea, it is difficult to see how the external unity of
the Church could have been preserved among the semi-barbarians of
Europe. And what a necessary thing it was--in ages of superstition,
ignorance, and anarchy--to preserve the unity of the Church, to
establish a spiritual power which should awe and control barbaric
princes! There are two sides to the supremacy of the popes as head
of the Church, when we consider the aspect and state of society in
those iron and lawless times. Would Providence have permitted such
a power to rule for a thousand years had it not been a necessity?
At any rate, this is too complicated a question for me to discuss.
It is enough for me to describe the conflict for principles, not to
attempt to settle them. In this matter I am not a partisan, but a
painter. I seek to describe a battle, not to defend either this
cause or that. I have my opinions, but this is no place to present
them. I seek to describe simply the great battle of the Middle
Ages, and you can draw your own conclusions as to the merits of the
respective causes. I present the battle of heroes,--a battle worthy
of the muse of Homer.
Hildebrand in this battle disdained to fight with any but great and
noble antagonists. As the friend of the poor man, crushed and
mocked by a cold and unfeeling nobility; as the protector of the
Church, in danger of being subverted by the unhallowed tyranny and
greed of princes; as the consecrated monarch of a great spiritual
fraternity,--he resolved to face the mightiest monarchs, and suffer,
and if need be die, for a cause which he regarded as the hope and
salvation of Europe. Therefore he convened another council, and
prohibited, under the terrible penalty of excommunication,--for that
was his mighty weapon,--the investiture of bishoprics and abbacies
at the hands of laymen: only he himself should give to ecclesiastics
the ring and the crozier,--the badges of spiritual authority. And
he equally threatened with eternal fire any bishop or abbot who
should receive his dignity from the hand of a prince.
This decree was especially aimed against the Emperor of Germany, to
whom, as liege lord, the Pope himself owed fealty and obedience.
Henry IV. was one of the mightiest monarchs of the Franconian
dynasty,--a great warrior and a great man, beloved by his subjects
and feared by the princes of Europe. But he, as well as Gregory,
was resolved to maintain the rights of his predecessors. He also
perceived the importance of the approaching contest. And what a
contest! The spiritual and temporal powers were now to be arrayed
against each other in a fierce antagonism. The apparent object of
contention changed. It was not merely simony; it was as to who
should be the supreme master of Germany and Italy, the emperor or
the pope. To whom, in the eyes of contemporaries, would victory
incline,--to the son of a carpenter, speaking in the name of the
Church, and holding in his hands the consecrated weapon of
excommunication; or the most powerful monarch of his age, armed
with the secular sword, and seeking to restore the dignity of Roman
emperors? The Pope is supported by the monks, the inferior clergy,
and the vast spiritual powers universally supposed to be delegated
to him by Christ, as the successor of Saint Peter; the Emperor is
supported by large feudal armies, and all the prestige of the
successors of Charlemagne. If the Pope appeals to an ancient
custom of the Church, the Emperor appeals to a general feudal
custom which required bishops and abbots to pay their homage to him
for the temporalities of their Sees. The Pope has the canons of
the Church on his side; the Emperor the laws of feudalism,--and
both the canons of the Church and feudal principles are binding
obligations. Hitherto they have not clashed. But now feudalism,
very generally established, and papal absolutism, rapidly
culminating, are to meet in angry collision. Shall the kings of
the earth prevail, assisted by feudal armies and outward grandeur,
and sustained by such powerful sentiments as loyalty and chivalry;
or shall a priest, speaking in the name of God Almighty, and
appealing to the future fears of men?
What conflict grander and more sublime than this, in the whole
history of society? What conflict proved more momentous in its
results?
I need not trace all the steps of that memorable contest, or
describe the details, from the time that the Pope sent out his
edicts and excommunicated all who dared to disobey him,--including
some of the most eminent German prelates and German princes. Henry
at this time was engaged in a desperate war with the Saxons, and
Gregory seized this opportunity to summon the Emperor--his emperor--
to appear before him at Rome and answer for alleged crimes against
the Saxon Church. Was there ever such audacity? How could Henry
help giving way to passionate indignation; he--the successor of the
Roman Caesars, sovereign lord of Germany and Italy--summoned to the
bar of a priest, and that priest his own subject, in a temporal
sense? He was filled with wrath and defiance, and at once summoned
a council of German bishops at Worms, "who denounced the Pope as a
usurper, a simonist, a murderer, a worshipper of the Devil, and
pronounced upon him the empty sentence of a deposition."
"The aged Hildebrand," in the words of Stephen, "was holding a
council in the second week of Lent, 1076, beneath the sculptured
roof of the Vatican, arrayed in the rich and mystic vestments of
pontifical dominion, and the papal choir were chanting those
immortal anthems which had come down from blessed saints and
martyrs, when the messenger of the Emperor presented himself
before the assembled hierarchy of Rome, and with insolent
demeanor and abrupt speech delivered the sentence of the German
council." He was left unharmed by the indignant pontiff, but
the next day ascending his throne, and in presence of the
dignitaries of his Church, thus invoked the assistance of the
pretended founder of his empire:--
"Saint Peter! lend us your ears, and listen to your servant whom
you have cherished from his infancy; and all the saints also bear
witness how the Roman Church raised me by force and against my will
to this high dignity, although I should have preferred to spend my
days in a continual pilgrimage than to ascend thy pulpit for any
human motive. And inasmuch as I think it will be grateful to you
that those intrusted to my care should obey me; therefore,
supported by these hopes, and for the honor and defence of the
Church, in the name of the Omnipotent God,--Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost,--by my authority and power, I prohibit King Henry, who with
unheard-of pride has raised himself against your Church, from
governing the kingdoms of Germany and Italy; I absolve all
Christians from the oath they have taken to him, and I forbid all
men to yield to him that service which is due unto a king.
Finally, I bind him with the bonds of anathema, that all people may
know that thou art Peter, and that upon thee the Son of God hath
built His Church, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail."
This was an old-fashioned excommunication; and we in these days
have but a faint idea what a dreadful thing it was, especially when
accompanied with an interdict. The churches were everywhere shut;
the dead were unburied in consecrated ground; the rites of religion
were suspended; gloom and fear sat on every countenance; desolation
overspread the land. The king was regarded as guilty and damned;
his ministers looked upon him as a Samson shorn of his locks; his
very wife feared contamination from his society; his children, as a
man blasted with the malediction of Heaven. When a man was
universally supposed to be cursed in the house and in the field; in
the wood and in the church; in eating or drinking; in fasting or
sleeping; in working or resting; in his arms, in his legs, in his
heart, and in his head; living or dying; in this world and in the
next,--what could he do?
And what could Henry do, with all his greatness? His victorious
armies deserted him; a rival prince laid claim to his throne; his
enemies multiplied; his difficulties thickened; new dangers
surrounded him on every side. If loyalty--that potent principle--
had summoned one hundred thousand warriors to his camp, a principle
much more powerful than loyalty--the fear of hell--had dispersed
them. Even his friends joined the Pope. The sainted Agnes, his
own mother, acquiesced in the sentence. The Countess Matilda, the
richest lady in the world, threw all her treasures at the feet of
her spiritual monarch. The moral sentiments of his own subjects
were turned against him; he was regarded as justly condemned. The
great princes of Germany sought his deposition. The world rejected
him, the Church abandoned him, and God had forsaken him. He was
prostrate, helpless, disarmed, ruined. True, he made superhuman
efforts: he traversed his empire with the hope of rallying his
subjects; he flew from city to city,--but all in vain. Every
convent, every castle, every city of his vast dominions beheld in
him the visitation of the Almighty. The diadem was obscured by the
tiara, and loyalty itself yielded to the superior potency of
religious fear. Only Bertha, his neglected wife, was faithful and
trusting in that gloomy day; all else had defrauded and betrayed
him. How bitter his humiliation! And yet his haughty foe was not
contented with the punishment he had inflicted. He declared that
if the sun went down on the 23d of February, 1077, before Henry was
restored to the bosom of the Church, his crown should be
transferred to another. That inexorable old pontiff laid claim to
the right of giving and taking away imperial crowns. Was ever
before seen such arrogance and audacity in a Pope? And yet he knew
that he would be sustained, he knew that his supremacy was based on
a universally recognized idea. Who can resist the ideas of his
age? Henry might have resisted, if resistance had been possible.
Even he must yield to irresistible necessity. He was morally
certain that he would lose his crown, and be in danger of losing
his soul, unless he made his peace with his dangerous enemy. It
was necessary that the awful curse should be removed. He had no
remedy; only one course was before him. He must yield; not to man
alone, but to an idea, which had the force of fate. Wonder not
that he made up his mind to submit. He was great, but not greater
than his age. How few men are! Mohammed could renounce prevailing
idolatries; Luther could burn a papal bull; but the Emperor of
Germany could not resist the accepted vicegerent of the Almighty.
Behold, then, the melancholy, pitiable spectacle of this mighty
monarch in the depth of winter--and a winter of unprecedented
severity--crossing, in the garb of a pilgrim, the frozen Alps,
enduring the greatest privations and fatigues and perils, and
approaching on foot the gloomy fortress of Canossa (beyond the Po),
in which Hildebrand had intrenched himself. Even then the angry
pontiff refused to see him. Henry had to stoop to a still deeper
degradation,--to stand bareheaded and barefooted for three days,
amid the blasts of winter, in the court-yard of the castle, before
the Pope would promise absolution, and then only at the
intercession of the Countess Matilda.
What are we to think of such a fall, such a humiliation on the part
of a sovereign? What are we to think of such haughtiness on the
part of a priest,--his subject? We are filled with blended pity
and indignation. We are inclined to say that this was the greatest
blunder that any monarch ever made; that Henry--humbled and
deserted and threatened as he was--should not have stooped to this;
that he should have lost his crown and life rather than handed over
his empire to a plebeian priest,--for he was an acknowledged hero;
he was monarch of half of Europe. And yet we are bound to consider
Henry's circumstances and the ideas with which he had to contend.
His was the error of the Middle Ages; the feeblest of his modern
successors would have killed the Pope if he could, rather than have
disgraced himself by such an ignominy.
True it is that Henry came to himself; that he repented of his
step. But it was too late. Gregory had gained the victory; and it
was all the greater because it was a moral one. It was known to
all Europe and all the world, and would be known to all posterity,
that the Emperor of Germany had bowed in submission to a foreign
priest. The temporal power had yielded to the spiritual; the State
had conceded the supremacy of the Church. The Pope had triumphed
over the mightiest monarch of the age, and his successors would
place their feet over future prostrate kings. What a victory!
What mighty consequences were the result of it! On what a throne
did this moral victory seat the future pontiffs of the Eternal
City! How august their dominion, for it was over the minds and
souls of men! Truly to the Pope were given the keys of Heaven and
Hell; and so long as the ideas of that age were accepted, who could
resist a man armed with the thunders of Omnipotence?
It mattered nothing that the Emperor was ashamed of his weakness;
that he retracted; that he vowed vengeance; that he marched at the
head of new armies. No matter that his adherents were indignant;
that all Germany wept; that loyalty rallied to his aid; that he
gained victories proportionate with his former defeats; that he
chased Gregory from city to city, and castle to castle, and convent
to convent, while his generals burned the Pope's palaces and wasted
his territories. No matter that Gregory--broken, defeated,
miserable, outwardly ruined--died prematurely in exile; no matter
that he did not, in his great reverses, anticipate the fruits of
his firmness and heroism. His principles survived him; they have
never been lost sight of by his successors; they gained strength
through successive generations. Innocent III. reaped what he had
sown. Kings dared not resist Innocent III., who realized those
three things to which the more able Gregory had aspired,--
"independent sovereignty, control over the princes of the earth,
and the supremacy of the Church." Innocent was the greater pope,
but Hildebrand was the greater man.
Yet, like so many of the great heroes of the world, he was not
destined in his own person to reap the fruits of his heroism. "I
have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in
exile,"--these were his last bitter words. He fancied he had
failed. But did he fail? What did he leave behind? He left his
great example and his still greater ideas. He left a legacy to his
successors which makes them still potent on the earth, in spite of
reformations and revolutions, and all the triumphs of literature
and science. How mighty his deeds! How great his services to his
Church! "He found," says an eloquent and able Edinburgh reviewer,
"the papacy dependent on the emperor; he sustained it by alliances
almost commensurate with the Italian peninsula. He found the
papacy electoral by the Roman people and clergy; he left it
electoral by papal nomination. He found the emperor the virtual
patron of the Roman See; he wrenched that power from his hands. He
found the secular clergy the allies and dependents of the secular
power; he converted them into inalienable auxiliaries of his own.
He found the patronage of the Church the desecrated spoil and
merchandise of princes; he reduced it to his own dominion. He is
celebrated as the reformer of the impure and profane abuses of his
age; he is more justly entitled to the praise of having left the
impress of his gigantic character on all the ages which have
succeeded him."
Such was the great Hildebrand; a conqueror, however, by the force
of recognized ideas more than by his own strength. How long, you
ask, shall his empire last? We cannot tell who can predict the
fortunes of such a power. It is not for me to speculate or preach.
In considering his life and career, I have simply attempted to
paint one of the most memorable moral contests of the world; to
show the power of genius and will in a superstitious age,--and,
more, the majestic force of ideas over the minds and souls of men,
even though these ideas cannot be sustained by reason or Scripture.
AUTHORITIES.
Epistles of Gregory VII.; Baronius's Annals; Dupin's Ecclesiastical
history; Voigt, in his Hildebrand als Gregory VII.; Guizot's
Lectures on Civilization; Sir James Stephens's article on
Hildebrand, in Edinburgh Review; Dugdale's Mosasticon; Hallam's
Middle Ages; Digby's Ages of Faith; Jaffe's Regesta Pontificum
Romanorum; Mignet's series of articles on La Lutte des Papes contre
les Empereurs d'Allemagne; M. Villemain's Histoire de Gregoire
VII.; Bowden on the life and Times of Hildebrand; Milman's Latin
Christianity; Watterich's Romanorum Pontificum ab Aequalibus
Conscriptae; Platina's Lives of the Popes; Stubbs's Constitutional
History; Lee's History of Clerical Celibacy; Cardinal Newman's
Essays; Lecky's History of European Morals; Dr. Dollinger's Church
History; Neander's Church History; articles in Contemporary Review
of July and August, 1882, on the Turning Point of the Middle Ages.
SAINT BERNARD.
A. D. 1091-1153.
MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS.
One of the oldest institutions of the Church is that which grew out
of monastic life. It had its seat, at a remote period, in India.
It has existed, in different forms, in other Oriental countries.
It has been modified by Brahminical, Buddhistic, and Persian
theogonies, and extended to Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. Go where
you will in the East, and you see traces of its mighty influence.
We cannot tell its remotest origin, but we see everywhere the force
of its ideas. Its fundamental principle appears to be the desire
to propitiate the Deity by penances and ascetic labors as an
atonement for sin, or as a means of rising to a higher religious
life. It has sought to escape the polluting influences of
demoralized society by lofty contemplation and retirement from the
world. From the first, it was a protest against materialism,
luxury, and enervating pleasures. It recognized something higher
and nobler than devotion to material gains, or a life of degrading
pleasure.
In one sense it was an intellectual movement, while in another it
was an insult to the human understanding. It attempted a purer
morality, but abnegated obvious and pressing duties. It was always
a contradiction,--lofty while degraded, seeking to comprehend the
profoundest mysteries, yet debased by puerile superstitions.
The consciousness of mankind, in all ages and countries, has ever
accepted retribution for sin--more or less permanent--in this world
or in the next. And it has equally accepted the existence of a
Supreme Intelligence and Power, to whom all are responsible, and in
connection with whom human destinies are bound up. The deeper we
penetrate into the occult wisdom of the East,--on which light has
been shed by modern explorations, monumental inscriptions,
manuscripts, historical records, and other things which science and
genius have deciphered,--the surer we feel that the esoteric
classes of India, Egypt, and China were more united in their views
of Supreme Power and Intelligence than was generally supposed fifty
years ago. The higher intellects of Asia, in all countries and
ages, had more lofty ideas of God than we have a right to infer
from the superstitions of the people generally. They had
unenlightened ideas as to the grounds of forgiveness. But of the
necessity of forgiveness and the favor of the Deity they had no
doubt.
The philosophical opinions of these sages gave direction to a great
religious movement. Matter was supposed to be inherently evil, and
mind was thought to be inherently good. The seat of evil was
placed in the body rather than in the heart and mind. Not the
thoughts of men were evil, but the passions and appetites of the
body. Hence the first thing for a good man to do was to bring the
body--this seat of evil--under subjection, and, if possible, to
eradicate the passions and appetites which enslave the body; and
this was to be done by self-flagellations, penances, austerities,
and solitude,--flight from the contaminating influences of the
world. All Oriental piety assumed this ascetic form. The
transition was easy to the sundering of domestic ties, to the
suppression of natural emotions and social enjoyments. The devotee
became austere, cold, inhuman, unsocial. He shunned the
habitations of men. And the more desirous he was to essay a high
religious life and thus rise in favor with God, the more severe and
revengeful and unforgiving he made the Deity he adored,--not a
compassionate Creator and Father, but an irresistible Power bent on
his destruction. This degrading view of the Deity, borrowed from
Paganism, tinged the subsequent theology of the Christian monks,
and entered largely into the theology of the Middle Ages.
Such was the prevailing philosophy, or theosophy--both lofty and
degraded--with which the Christian convert had to contend; not
merely the shameless vices of the people, so open and flagrant as
to call out disgust and indignation, but also the views which the
more virtuous and religious of Pagan saints accepted and
promulgated: and not saints alone, but those who made the greatest
pretension to intellectual culture, like the Gnostics and
Manicheans; those men who were the first to ensnare Saint
Augustine,--specious, subtle, sophistical, as acute as the Brahmins
of India. It was Eastern philosophy, unquestionably false, that
influenced the most powerful institution that existed in Europe for
above a thousand years,--an institution which all the learning and
eloquence of the Reformers of the sixteenth century could not
subvert, except in Protestant countries.
Now what, more specifically, were the ideas which the early monks
borrowed from India, Persia, and Egypt, which ultimately took such
a firm hold of the European mind?
One was the superior virtue of a life devoted to purely religious
contemplation, and for the same end that animated the existence of
fakirs and sofis. It was to escape the contaminating influence of
matter, to rise above the wants of the body, to exterminate animal
passions and appetites, to hide from a world which luxury
corrupted. The Christian recluses were thus led to bury themselves
in cells among the mountains and deserts, in dreary and
uncomfortable caverns, in isolated retreats far from the habitation
of men,--yea, among wild beasts, clothing themselves in their skins
and eating their food, in order to commune with God more
effectually, and propitiate His favor. Their thoughts were
diverted from the miseries which they ought to have alleviated and
the ignorance which they ought to have removed, and were
concentrated upon themselves, not upon their relatives and
neighbors. The cries of suffering humanity were disregarded in a
vain attempt to practise doubtful virtues. How much good those
pious recluses might have done, had their piety taken a more
practical form! What missionaries they might have made, what self-
denying laborers in the field of active philanthropy, what noble
teachers to the poor and miserable! The conversion of the world to
Christianity did not enter into their minds so much as the desire
to swell the number of their communities. They only aimed at a
dreamy pietism,--at best their own individual salvation, rather
than the salvation of others. Instead of reaching to the beatific
vision, they became ignorant, narrow, and visionary; and, when
learned, they fought for words and not for things. They were
advocates of subtile and metaphysical distinctions in theology,
rather than of those practical duties and simple faith which
primitive Christianity enjoined. Monastic life, no less than the
schools of Alexandria, was influential in creating a divinity which
gave as great authority to dogmas that are the result of
intellectual deductions, as those based on direct and original
declarations. And these deductions were often gloomy, and colored
by the fears which were inseparable from a belief in divine wrath
rather than divine love. The genius of monasticism, ancient and
modern, is the propitiation of the Divinity who seeks to punish
rather than to forgive. It invented Purgatory, to escape the awful
burnings of an everlasting hell of physical sufferings. It
pervaded the whole theology of the Middle Ages, filling hamlet and
convent alike with an atmosphere of fear and wrath, and creating a
cruel spiritual despotism. The recluse, isolated and lonely,
consumed himself with phantoms, fancied devils, and "chimeras
dire." He could not escape from himself, although he might fly
from society. As a means of grace he sought voluntary solitary
confinement, without nutritious food or proper protection from the
heat and cold, clad in a sheepskin filled with dirt and vermin.
What life could be more antagonistic to enlightened reason? What
mistake more fatal to everything like self-improvement, culture,
knowledge, happiness? And all for what? To strive after an
impossible perfection, or the solution of insoluble questions, or
the favor of a Deity whose attributes he misunderstood.
But this unnatural, unwise retirement was not the worst evil in the
life of a primitive monk, with all its dreamy contemplation and
silent despair. It was accompanied with the most painful
austerities,--self-inflicted scourgings, lacerations, dire
privations, to propitiate an angry deity, or to bring the body into
a state which would be insensible to pain, or to exorcise passions
which the imaginations inflamed. All this was based on penance,--
self-expiation,--which entered so largely into the theogonies of
the East, and which gave a gloomy form to the piety of the Middle
Ages. This error was among the first to kindle the fiery protests
of Luther. The repudiation of this error, and of its logical
sequences, was one of the causes of the Reformation. This error
cast its dismal shadow on the common life of the Middle Ages. You
cannot penetrate the spirit of those centuries without a painful
recognition of almost universal darkness and despair. How gloomy
was a Gothic church before the eleventh century, with its dark and
heavy crypt, its narrow windows, its massive pillars, its low roof,
its cold, damp pavement, as if men went into that church to hide
themselves and sing mournful songs,--the Dies Irae of monastic
fear!
But the primitive monks, with all their lofty self-sacrifices and
efforts for holy meditation, towards the middle of the fourth
century, as their number increased from the anarchies and miseries
of a falling empire, became quarrelsome, sometimes turbulent, and
generally fierce and fanatical. They had to be governed. They
needed some master mind to control them, and confine them to their
religious duties. Then arose Basil, a great scholar, and
accustomed to civilized life in the schools of Athens and
Constantinople, who gave rules and laws to the monks, gathered them
into communities and discouraged social isolation, knowing that the
demons had more power over men when they were alone and idle.
This Basil was an extraordinary man. His ancestors were honorable
and wealthy. He moved in the highest circle of social life, like
Chrysostom. He was educated in the most famous schools. He
travelled extensively like other young men of rank. His tutor was
the celebrated Libanius, the greatest rhetorician of the day. He
exhausted Antioch, Caesarea, and Constantinople, and completed his
studies at Athens, where he formed a famous friendship with Gregory
Nazianzen, which was as warm and devoted as that between Cicero and
Atticus: these young men were the talk and admiration of Athens.
Here, too, he was intimate with young Julian, afterwards the
"Apostate" Emperor of Rome. Basil then visited the schools of
Alexandria, and made the acquaintance of the great Athanasius, as
well as of those monks who sought a retreat amid Egyptian
solitudes. Here his conversion took place, and he parted with his
princely patrimony for the benefit of the poor. He then entered
the Church, and was successively ordained deacon and priest, while
leading a monastic life. He retired among the mountains of
Armenia, and made choice of a beautiful grove, watered with crystal
streams, where he gave himself to study and meditation. Here he
was joined by his friend Gregory Nazianzen and by enthusiastic
admirers, who formed a religious fraternity, to whom he was a
spiritual father. He afterwards was forced to accept the great See
of Caesarea, and was no less renowned as bishop and orator than he
had been as monk. Yet it is as a monk that he left the most
enduring influence, since he made the first great change in
monastic life,--making it more orderly, more industrious, and less
fanatical.
He instituted or embodied, among others, the three great vows,
which are vital to monastic institutions,--Poverty, Obedience, and
Chastity. In these vows he gave the institution a more Christian
and a less Oriental aspect. Monachism became more practical and
less visionary and wild. It approximated nearer to the Christian
standard. Submission to poverty is certainly a Christian virtue,
if voluntary poverty is not. Chastity is a cardinal duty.
Obedience is a necessity to all civilized life. It is the first
condition of all government.
Moreover, these three vows seem to have been called for by the
condition of society, and the prevalence of destructive views.
Here Basil,--one of the commanding intellects of his day, and as
learned and polished as he was pious,--like Jerome after him,
proved himself a great legislator and administrator, including in
his comprehensive view both Christian principles and the
necessities of the times, and adapting his institution to both.
One of the most obvious, flagrant, and universal evils of the day
was devotion to money-making in order to purchase sensual
pleasures. It pervaded Roman life from the time of Augustus. The
vow of poverty, therefore, was a stern, lofty, disdainful protest
against the most dangerous and demoralizing evil of the Empire. It
hurled scorn, hatred, and defiance on this overwhelming evil, and
invoked the aid of Christianity. It was simply the earnest
affirmation and belief that money could not buy the higher joys of
earth, and might jeopardize the hopes of heaven. It called to mind
the greatest examples; it showed that the great teachers of
mankind, the sages and prophets of history, had disdained money as
the highest good; that riches exposed men to great temptation, and
lowered the standard of morality and virtue,--"how hardly shall
they who have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" It appealed
to the highest form of self-sacrifice; it arrayed itself against a
vice which was undermining society. And among truly Christian
people this new application of Christ's warnings against the
dangers of wealth excited enthusiasm. It was like enlisting in the
army of Christ against his greatest enemies. Make any duty clear
and imperious to Christian people, and they will generally conform
to it. So the world saw one of the most impressive spectacles of
all history,--the rich giving up their possessions to follow the
example and injunctions of Christ. It was the most signal test of
Christian obedience. It prompted Paula, the richest lady of
Christian antiquity, to devote the revenues of an entire city,
which she owned, to the cause of Christ; and the approbation of
Jerome, her friend, was a sufficient recompense.
The vow of Chastity was equally a protest against one of the
characteristic vices of the day, as well as a Christian virtue.
Luxury and pleasure-seeking lives had relaxed the restraints of
home and the virtues of earlier days. The evils of concubinage
were shameless and open throughout the empire, which led to a low
estimate of female virtue and degraded the sex. The pagan poets
held up woman as a subject of scorn and scarcasm. On no subject
were the apostles more urgent in their exhortations than to a life
of purity. To no greater temptation were the converts to
Christianity subjected than the looseness of prevailing sentiments
in reference to this vice. It stared everybody in the face. Basil
took especial care to guard the monks from this prevailing
iniquity, and made chastity a transcendent and fundamental virtue.
He aimed to remove the temptation to sin. The monks were enjoined
to shun the very presence of women. If they carried the system of
non-intercourse too far, and became hard and unsympathetic, it was
to avoid the great scandal of the age,--a still greater evil. To
the monk was denied even the blessing of the marriage ties.
Celibacy became a fundamental law of monachism. It was not to
cement a spiritual despotism that Basil forbade marriage, but to
attain a greater sanctity,--for a monk was consecrated to what was
rightly held the higher life. This law of celibacy was abused, and
gradually was extended to all the clergy, secular as well as
regular, but not till the clergy were all subordinated to the rule
of an absolute Pope. It is the fate of all human institutions to
become corrupt; but no institution of the Church has been so
fatally perverted as that pertaining to the marriage of the clergy.
Founded to promote purity of personal life, it was used to uphold
the arms of spiritual despotism. It was the policy of Hildebrand.
The vow of Obedience, again, was made in special reference to the
disintegration of society, when laws were feebly enforced and a
central power was passing away. The discipline even of armies was
relaxed. Mobs were the order of the day, even in imperial cities.
Moreover, monks had long been insubordinate; they obeyed no head,
except nominally; they were with difficulty ruled in their
communities. Therefore obedience was made a cardinal virtue, as
essential to the very existence of monastic institutions. I need
not here allude to the perversion of this rule,--how it degenerated
into a fearful despotism, and was made use of by ambitious popes,
and finally by the generals of the Mendicant Friars and the
Jesuits. All the rules of Basil were perverted from their original
intention; but in his day they were called for.
About a century later the monastic system went through another
change or development, when Benedict, a remarkable organizer,
instituted on Monte Cassino, near Naples, his celebrated monastery
(529 A. D.), which became the model of all the monasteries of the
West. He reaffirmed the rules of Basil, but with greater
strictness. He gave no new principles to monastic life; but he
adapted it to the climate and institutions of the newly founded
Gothic kingdoms of Europe. It became less Oriental; it was made
more practical; it was invested with new dignity. The most
visionary and fanatical of all the institutions of the East was
made useful. The monks became industrious. Industry was
recognized as a prime necessity even for men who had retired from
the world. No longer were the labors of monks confined to the
weaving of baskets, but they were extended to the comforts of
ordinary life,--to the erection of stately buildings, to useful
arts, the systematic cultivation of the land, to the accumulation
of wealth,--not for individuals, but for their monasteries.
Monastic life became less dreamy, less visionary, but more useful,
recognizing the bodily necessities of men. The religious duties of
monks were still dreary, monotonous, and gloomy,--long and
protracted singing in the choir, incessant vigils, an unnatural
silence at the table, solitary walks in the cloister, the absence
of social pleasures, confinement to the precincts of their
convents; but their convents became bee-hives of industry, and
their lands were highly cultivated. The monks were hospitable;
they entertained strangers, and gave a shelter to the persecuted
and miserable. Their monasteries became sacred retreats, which
were respected by those rude warriors who crushed beneath their
feet the glories of ancient civilization. Nor for several
centuries did the monks in their sacred enclosures give especial
scandal. Their lives were spent in labors of a useful kind,
alternated and relieved by devotional duties.
Hence they secured the respect and favor of princes and good men,
who gave them lands and rich presents of gold and silver vessels.
Their convents were unmolested and richly endowed, and these became
enormously multiplied in every European country. Gradually they
became so rich as to absorb the wealth of nations. Their abbots
became great personages, being chosen from the ranks of princes and
barons. The original poverty and social insignificance of
monachism passed away, and the institution became the most powerful
organization in Europe. It then aspired to political influence,
and the lord abbots became the peers of princes and the ministers
of kings. Their abbey churches, especially, became the wonder and
the admiration of the age, both for size and magnificence. The
abbey church of Cluny, in Burgundy, was five hundred and thirty
feet long, and had stalls for two hundred monks. It had the
appointment of one hundred and fifty parish priests. The church of
Saint Albans, in England, is said to have been six hundred feet
long; and that of Glastonbury, the oldest in England, five hundred
and thirty. Peterborough's was over five hundred. The kings of
England, both Saxon and Norman, were especial patrons of these
religious houses. King Edgar founded forty-seven monasteries and
richly endowed them; Henry I. founded one hundred and fifty; and
Henry II. as many more. At one time there were seven hundred
Benedictine abbeys in England, some of which were enormously rich,--
like those of Westminster, St. Albans, Glastonbury, and Bury St.
Edmunds,--and their abbots were men of the highest social and
political distinction. They sat in Parliament as peers of the
realm; they coined money, like feudal barons; they lived in great
state and dignity. The abbot of Monte Cassino was duke and prince,
and chancellor of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This celebrated
convent had the patronage of four bishoprics, sixteen hundred and
sixty-two churches, and possessed or controlled two hundred and
fifty castles, four hundred and forty towns, and three hundred and
thirty-six manors. Its revenues exceeded five hundred thousand
ducats, so that the lord-abbot was the peer of the greatest secular
princes. He was more powerful and wealthy, probably, than any
archbishop in Europe. One of the abbots of St. Gall entered
Strasburg with one thousand horsemen in his train. Whiting, of
Glastonbury, entertained five hundred people of fashion at one
time, and had three hundred domestic servants. "My vow of
poverty," said another of these lordly abbots,--who generally rode
on mules with gilded bridles and with hawks on their wrists,--"has
given me ten thousand crowns a year; and my vow of obedience has
raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince."
Among the privileges of these abbots was exemption from taxes and
tolls; they were judges in the courts; they had the execution of
all rents, and the supreme control of the income of the abbey
lands. The revenues of Westminster and Glastonbury were equal to
half a million of dollars a year in our money, considering the
relative value of gold and silver. Glastonbury owned about one
thousand oxen, two hundred and fifty cows, and six thousand sheep.
Fontaine abbey possessed forty thousand acres of land. The abbot
of Augia, in Germany, had a revenue of sixty thousand crowns,--
several millions, as money is now measured. At one time the monks,
with the other clergy, owned half of the lands of Europe. If a
king was to be ransomed, it was they who furnished the money; if
costly gifts were to be given to the Pope, it was they who made
them. The value of the vessels of gold and silver, the robes and
copes of silk and velvet, the chalices, the altar-pieces, and the
shrines enriched with jewels, was inestimable. The feasts which
the abbots gave were almost regal. At the installation of the
abbot of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, there were consumed fifty-
eight tuns of beer, eleven tuns of wine, thirty-one oxen, three
hundred pigs, two hundred sheep, one thousand geese, one thousand
capons, six hundred rabbits, nine thousand eggs, while the guests
numbered six thousand people. Of the various orders of the
Benedictines there have been thirty-seven thousand monasteries and
one hundred and fifty thousand abbots. From the monks, twenty-one
thousand have been chosen as bishops and archbishops, and twenty-
eight have been elevated to the papal throne.
From these things, and others which may seem too trivial to
mention, we infer the great wealth and power of monastic
institutions, the most flourishing days of which were from the
sixth century to the Crusades, beginning in the eleventh, when more
than one hundred thousand monks acknowledged the rule of Saint
Benedict. During this period of prosperity, when the vast abbey
churches were built, and when abbots were great temporal as well as
spiritual magnates, quite on an equality with the proudest feudal
barons, we notice a marked decline in the virtues which had
extorted the admiration of Europe. The Benedictines retained their
original organization, they were bound by the same vows (as
individuals, the monks were always poor), they wore the same dress,
as they did centuries before, and they did not fail in their duties
in the choir,--singing their regular chants from two o'clock in the
morning. But discipline was relaxed; the brothers strayed into
unseemly places; they indulged in the pleasures of the table; they
were sensual in their appearance; they were certainly ignorant, as
a body; and they performed more singing than preaching or teaching.
They lived for themselves rather than for the people. They however
remained hospitable to the last. Their convents were hotels as
well as bee-hives; any stranger could remain two nights at a
convent without compensation and without being questioned. The
brothers dined together at the refectory, according to the rules,
on bread, vegetables, and a little meat; although it was noticed
that they had a great variety in cooking eggs, which were turned
and roasted and beaten up, and hardened and minced and fried and
stuffed. It is said that subsequently they drank enormous
quantities of beer and wine, and sometimes even to disgraceful
excess. Their rules required them to keep silence at their meals;
but their humanity got the better of them, and they have been
censured for their hilarious and frivolous conversation,--for jests
and stories and puns. Bernard accused the monks of degeneracy, of
being given to the pleasures of the table, of loving the good
things which they professed to scorn,--rare fish, game, and
elaborate cookery.
That the monks sadly degenerated in morals and discipline, and even
became objects of scandal, is questioned by no respectable
historian. No one was more bitter and vehement in his denunciations
of this almost universal corruption of monastic life than Saint
Bernard himself,--the impersonation of an ideal monk. Hence reforms
were attempted; and the Cluniacs and Cistercians and other orders
arose, modelled after the original institution on Monte Cassino.
These were only branches of the Benedictines. Their vows and habits
and duties were the same. It would seem that the prevailing vices
of the Benedictines, in their decline, were those which were
fostered by great wealth, and consequent idleness and luxury. But
at their worst estate the monks, or regular clergy, were no worse
than the secular clergy, or parish priests, in their ordinary lives,
and were more intelligent,--at least more learned. The ignorance of
the secular clergy was notorious and scandalous. They could not
even write letters of common salutation; and what little knowledge
they had was extolled and exaggerated. It was confined to the
acquisition of the Psalter by heart, while a little grammar,
writing, and accounts were regarded as extraordinary. He who could
write a few homilies, drawn from the Fathers, was a wonder and a
prodigy. There was a total absence of classical literature.
But the Benedictines, idle and worldly as they were, guarded what
little literature had escaped the ruin of the ancient civilization.
They gave the only education the age afforded. There was usually a
school attached to every convent, and manual labor was shortened in
favor of students. Nor did the monks systematically and
deliberately shut the door of knowledge against those inclined to
study, for at that time there was no jealousy of learning; there
was only indifference to it, or want of appreciation. The age was
ignorant, and life was hard, and the struggle for existence
occupied the thoughts of all. The time of the monks was consumed
in alternate drudgeries and religious devotions. There was such a
general intellectual torpor that scholars (and these were very few)
were left at liberty to think and write as they pleased on the
great questions of theology. There was such a general unanimity of
belief, that the popes were not on the look-out for heresy. Nobody
thought of attacking their throne. There was no jealousy about the
reading of the Scriptures. Every convent had a small library,
mostly composed of Lives of the saints, and of devout meditations
and homilies; and the Bible was the greatest treasure of all,--the
Vulgate of Saint Jerome, which was copied and illuminated by busy
hands. In spite of the general ignorance, the monks relieved their
dull lives by some attempts at art. This was the age of the most
beautiful illuminated manuscripts. There was but little of
doctrinal controversy, for the creed of the Church was settled; but
pious meditations and the writings of noted saints were studied and
accepted,--especially the works of Saint Augustine, who had fixed
the thinking of the West for a thousand years. Pagan literature
had but little charm until Aristotle was translated by Arabian
scholars. The literature of the Church was puerile and
extravagant, yet Christian,--consisting chiefly of legends of
martyrs and Lives of saints. That literature has no charm to us,
and can never be revived, indeed is already forgotten and
neglected, as well it may be; but it gave unity to Christian
belief, and enthroned the Christian heroes on the highest pedestal
of human greatness. In the monasteries some one of the fraternity
read aloud these Lives and Meditations, while the brothers worked
or dined. There was no discussion, for all thought alike; and all
sought to stimulate religious emotions rather than to quicken
intellectual activity.
About half the time of the monks, in a well-regulated monastery,
was given to singing and devotional exercises and religious
improvement, and the other half to labors in the fields, or in
painting or musical composition. So far as we know, the monks
lived in great harmony, and were obedient to the commands of their
superiors. They had a common object to live for, and had few
differences in opinion on any subject. They did not enjoy a high
life, but it was free from distracting pleasures. They held to
great humility, with which spiritual pride was mingled,--not the
arrogant pride of the dialectician, but the self-satisfied pride of
the devotee. There was no religious hatred, except towards Turks
and Saracens. The monk, in his narrowness and ignorance, may be
repulsive to an enlightened age: he was not repulsive to his own,
for he was not behind it either in his ideas or in his habits of
life. In fact, the more repulsive the monk of the dark ages is to
this generation, the more venerated he was by bishops and barons
seven hundred years ago; which fact leads us to infer that the
degenerate monk might be to us most interesting when he was most
condemned by the reformers of his day, since he was more humane,
genial, and free than his brethren, chained to the rigid discipline
of his convent. Even a Friar Tuck is not so repulsive to us as an
unsocial, austere, narrow-minded, and ignorant fanatic of the
eleventh century.
But the monks were not to remain forever imprisoned in the castles
of ignorance and despair. With the opening of the twelfth century
light began to dawn upon the human mind. The intellectual monk,
long accustomed to devout meditations, began to speculate on those
subjects which had occupied his thoughts,--on God and His
attributes, on the nature and penalty of sin, on redemption, on the
Saviour, on the power of the will to resist evil, and other
questions that had agitated the early Fathers of the Church. Then
arose such men as Erigena, Roscelin, Berenger, Lanfranc, Anselm,
Bernard, and others,--all more or less orthodox, but inquiring and
intellectual. It was within the walls of the cloister that the
awakening began and the first impulse was given to learning and
philosophy. The abbey of Bec, in Normandy, was the most
distinguished of new intellectual centres, while Clairvaux and
other princely abbeys had inmates as distinguished for meditative
habits as for luxury and pride.
It was at this period, when the convents of Europe rejoiced in
ample possessions, and their churches rivalled cathedrals in size
and magnificence, and their abbots were lords and princes,--the
palmy age of monastic institutions, chiefly of the Benedictine
order,--that Saint Bernard, the greatest and best representative of
Mediaeval monasticism, was born, 1091, at Fontaine, in Burgundy.
He belonged to a noble family. His mother was as remarkable as
Monica or Nonna. She had six sons and a daughter, whom she early
consecrated to the Lord. Bernard was the third son. Like Luther,
he was religiously inclined from early youth, and panted for
monastic seclusion. At the age of twenty-three he entered the new
monastery at Citeaux, which had been founded a few years before by
Stephen Harding, an English saint, who revived the rule of Saint
Benedict with still greater strictness, and was the founder of the
Cistercian order,--a branch of the Benedictines. He entered this
gloomy retreat, situated amid marshes and morasses, with no outward
attractions like Cluny, but unhealthy and miserably poor,--the
dreariest spot, perhaps, in Burgundy; and he entered at the head of
thirty young men, of the noble class, among whom were four of his
brothers who had been knights, and who presented themselves to the
abbot as novices, bent on the severest austerities that human
nature could support.
Bernard himself was a beautiful, delicate, refined young man,--
tall, with flaxen hair, fair complexion, blue eyes from which shone
a superhuman simplicity and purity. His noble birth would have
opened to him the highest dignities of the Church, but he sought
only to bear the yoke of Christ, and to be nailed to the cross; and
he really became a common laborer wrapped in a coarse cowl, digging
ditches and planting fields,--for such were the labors of the monks
of Citeaux when not performing their religious exercises. But his
disposition was as beautiful as his person, and he soon won the
admiration of his brother monks, as he had won the affection of the
knights of Burgundy. Such was his physical weakness that "nearly
everything he took his stomach rejected;" and such was the rigor of
his austerities that he destroyed the power of appetite. He could
scarcely distinguish oil from wine. He satisfied his hunger with
the Bible and quenched his thirst with prayer. In three years he
became famous as a saint, and was made Abbot of Clairvaux,--a new
Cistercian convent, in a retired valley which had been a nest of
robbers.
But his intellect was as remarkable as his piety, and his monastery
became not only a model of monastic life to which flocked men from
all parts of Europe to study its rules, but the ascetic abbot
himself became an oracle on all the questions of the day. So great
was his influence that when he died, in 1153, he left behind one
hundred and sixty monasteries formed after his model. He became the
counsellor of kings and nobles, bishops and popes. He was summoned
to attend councils and settle quarrels. His correspondence exceeded
that of Jerome or Saint Augustine. He was sought for as bishop in
the largest cities of France and Italy. He ruled Europe by the
power of learning and sanctity. He entered into all the theological
controversies of the day. He was the opponent of Abelard, whose
condemnation he secured. He became a great theologian and
statesman, as well as churchman. He incited the princes of Europe
to a new crusade. His eloquence is said to have been marvellous;
even the tones of his voice would melt to pity or excite to rage.
With a long neck, like that of Cicero, and a trembling, emaciated
frame, he preached with passionate intensity. Nobody could resist
his eloquence. He could scarcely stand upright from weakness, yet
he could address ten thousand men. He was an outspoken man, and
reproved the greatest dignitaries with as much boldness as did
Savonarola. He denounced the gluttony of monks, the avarice of
popes, and the rapacity of princes. He held heresy in mortal
hatred, like the Fathers of the fifth century. His hostility to
Abelard was direful, since he looked upon him as undermining
Christianity and extinguishing faith in the world. In his defence
of orthodoxy he was the peer of Augustine or Athanasius. He
absolutely abhorred the Mohammedans as the bitterest foes of
Christendom,--the persecutors of pious pilgrims. He wandered over
Europe preaching a crusade. He renounced the world, yet was
compelled by the unanimous voice of his contemporaries to govern the
world. He gave a new impulse to the order of Knights Templars. He
was as warlike as he was humble. He would breathe the breath of
intense hostility into the souls of crusaders, and then hasten back
to the desolate and barren country in which Clairvaux was situated,
rebuild his hut of leaves and boughs, and soothe his restless spirit
with the study of the Song of Songs. Like his age, and like his
institution, he was a great contradiction. The fiercest and most
dogmatic of controversialists was the most gentle and loving of
saints. His humanity was as marked as his fanaticism, and nothing
could weaken it,--not even the rigors of his convent life. He wept
at the sorrows of all who sought his sympathy or advice. On the
occasion of his brother's death he endeavored to preach a sermon on
the Canticles, but broke down as Jerome did at the funeral of Paula.
He kept to the last the most vivid recollection of his mother; and
every night, before he went to bed, he recited the seven Penitential
Psalms for the benefit of her soul.
In his sermons and exhortations Bernard dwelt equally on the wrath
of God and the love of Christ. Said he to a runaway Cistercian,
"Thou fearest watchings, fasts, and manual labor, but these are
light to one who thinks on eternal fire. The remembrance of the
outer darkness takes away all horror from solitude. Place before
thine eyes the everlasting weeping and gnashing of teeth, the fury
of those flames which can never be extinguished" (the essence of
the theology of the Middle Ages,--the fear of Hell, of a physical
and eternal Hell of bodily torments, by which fear those ages were
controlled). Bernard, the loveliest impersonation of virtue which
those ages saw, was not beyond their ideas. He impersonated them,
and therefore led the age and became its greatest oracle. The
passive virtues of the Sermon on the Mount were united with the
fiercest passions of religious intolerance and the most repulsive
views of divine vengeance. That is the soul of monasticism, even
as reformed by Harding, Alberic, and Bernard in the twelfth
century,--less human than in the tenth century, yet more
intellectual.
The monks of Citeaux, of Morimond, of Pontigny, of Clairvaux, amid
the wastes of a barren country, with their white habits and
perpetual vigils and haircloth shirts and root dinners and hard
labors in the field were yet the counsellors and ministers of kings
and the creators of popes, and incited the nations to the most
bloody and unfortunate wars in the whole history of society,--I
mean the Crusades. Some were great intellectual giants, yet all
repelled scepticism as life repels death; all dwelt on the
sufferings of the cross as a door through which the penitent and
believing could surely enter heaven, yet based the justice of the
infinite Father of Love on what, when it appeals to consciousness,
seems to be the direst injustice. We cannot despise the Middle
Ages, which produced such beatific and exalted saints, but we pity
those dismal times when the great mass of the people had so little
pleasure and comfort in this life, and such gloomy fears of the
world to come; when life was made a perpetual sacrifice and
abnegation of all the pleasures that are given us to enjoy,--to use
and not to pervert. Hence monasticism was repulsive, even in its
best ages, to enlightened reason, and fatal to all progress among
nations, although it served a useful purpose when men were governed
by fear alone, and when violence and strife and physical discomfort
and ignorance and degrading superstitions covered the fairest
portion of the earth with a funereal pall for more than a thousand
years.
The thirteenth century saw a new development of monastic
institutions in the creation of the Mendicant Friars,--especially
the Dominicans and Franciscans,--monks whose mission it was to
wander over Europe as preachers, confessors, and teachers. The
Benedictines were too numerous, wealthy, and corrupt to be
reformed. They had become a scandal; they had lost the confidence
of good men. There were needed more active partisans of the Pope
to sustain his authority; the new universities required abler
professors; the cities sought more popular preachers; the great
desired more intelligent confessors. The Crusades had created a
new field of enterprise, and had opened to the eye of Europe a
wider horizon of knowledge. The universities which had grown up
around the cathedral schools had kindled a spirit of inquiry.
Church architecture had become lighter, more cheerful, and more
symbolic. The Greek philosophy had revealed a new method. The
doctrines of the Church, if they did not require a new system, yet
needed, or were supposed to need, the aid of philosophy, for the
questions which the schoolmen discussed were so subtile and
intricate that only the logic of Aristotle could make them clear.
Now the Mendicant orders entered with a zeal which has never been
equalled, except by the Jesuits, into all the inquiries of the
schools, and kindled a new religious life among the people, like
the Methodists of the last century. They were somewhat similar to
the Temperance reformers of the last fifty years. They were
popular, zealous, intelligent, and religious. So great were their
talents and virtues that they speedily spread over Europe, and
occupied the principal pulpits and the most important chairs in the
universities. Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and
Duns Scotus were the great ornaments of these new orders. Their
peculiarity--in contrast with the old orders--was, that they
wandered from city to city and village to village at the command of
their superiors. They had convents, like the other monks; but they
professed absolute poverty, went barefooted
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